Recent news tell us that the overall economic situation is getting better. But let’s look at the unemployment numbers. State and regional unemployment rates changed a little in August. Sixteen states registered lower unemployment rate in August, 27 states and the District of Columbia reported rate increases and seven states had no change.
Over the past twelve months, jobless rates increased in all fifty states and the District of Columbia.
The national unemployment rate has reached 9.7 percent which is up 0.3 percentage points from July 2009 and up 3.5 points from August 2008.
The highest regional unemployment rate (10.6) in West Region, up 4.1 percentage points from August 2008. The lowest rate is 9.0 in Northeast. South and Midwest Regions reported 9.2 and 10 percentage point accordingly.
As we can see all four regions experienced significant unemployment rate increases from August 2008.
