June 19th, 2009

Most troubled states: where will they be in 2013?

By John Paul Murphy, Content Services Manager

Today on CNNMoney.com an article was released which identified the five states with the highest unemployment rates in the month of May.  Those hardest hit states were Michigan, Oregon, South Carolina, Rhode Island, and California. 

So long as you haven’t been residing in a cave or under a rock somewhere, you know the country is struggling with joblessness; more importantly looking forward, will these states be in shambles in the future? With this thought in mind and out of sheer curiosity, investigating the employment situation in those states seemed like a good idea.

The following data points were cherry picked from the Onboard databases to help paint a picture of the employment situation in 2013:

• 2013 State  Employment projections, highest and lowest within the state
• 2013 County  Employment projections, highest and lowest within the state
• 2013 Place Employment projections, highest and lowest within the state

All projection data is proprietary information from Onboard Informatics.

Michigan

• State 2013 Employment Projection: 4,731,843
• County with the Lowest 2013 Employment Projection: Keweenaw County, 828
• County with the Highest 2013 Employment Projection: Wayne County, 803,976
• Place with the Lowest 2013 Employment Projection: Vandalia, Mi (Cass County), 24
• Place with the Highest 2013 Employment Projection: Detroit, Mi (Wayne County), 294,230

Oregon

• State 2013 Employment Projection: 1,950,118
• County with the Lowest 2013 Employment Projection: Wheeler County, 522
• County with the Highest 2013 Employment Projection: Wayne County, 364,400
• Place with the Lowest 2013 Employment Projection: Greenhorn, Or (Baker County), 24
• Place with the Highest 2013 Employment Projection: Portland, Or (Clackamas County), 294,230

South Carolina

• State 2013 Employment Projection: 2,148,003
• County with the Lowest 2013 Employment Projection: Allendale County, 3,180
• County with the Highest 2013 Employment Projection: Greenville County, 221,147
• Place with the Lowest 2013 Employment Projection: Lockhart, SC (Union County), 13
• Place with the Highest 2013 Employment Projection: Charleston, SC (Berkeley County), 52,164

Rhode Island

• State 2013 Employment Projection: 545,575
• County with the Lowest 2013 Employment Projection: Bristol County, 28,166
• County with the Highest 2013 Employment Projection: Providence County, 311,167
• Place with the Lowest 2013 Employment Projection: Melville, RI (Newport County), 624
• Place with the Highest 2013 Employment Projection: Providence, RI (Providence County), 76,423

California

• State 2013 Employment Projection: 18,419,297
• County with the Lowest 2013 Employment Projection: Alpine County, 606
• County with the Highest 2013 Employment Projection: Los Angeles County, 4,905,858
• Place with the Lowest 2013 Employment Projection: Storrie, Ca (Plumas County), 2
• Place with the Highest 2013 Employment Projection: Los Angeles, Ca (Los Angeles County), 1,866,663

The employment numbers represent the projected number of people working within a specified geography level (state/county/place). It does not reflect the number of people that live and work within the specified geography level (i.e. people living and working in different counties).  If you have any questions, please contact us.

Tags: CNNMoney, community data, community information, content, data, employment, news, onboard, Onboard Informatics, unemployment rate.

October 29th, 2008

Out of Work? Out of Luck…

By Tara Powers

This blog post is courtesy of our Blogger at Large, Tara Powers…

Hola once again from my temporary home across the pond. Since I’ve last blogged, things haven’t gotten much better with the economy in the U.S. or abroad — on Tuesday the European Commission approved yet another bailout plan, this one amounting to 9 billion Euros, for German bank IKB, which has also been burned by the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.

The seasonal unemployment rate in the U.S. continues to climb as 2008 comes to a close. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate was at 4.9 percent in January of 2008, and as of September it stood at 6.1 percent. The percentage saw a steady increase over the course of the year, with the biggest jump being between April and May, from 5.0 percent to 5.5 percent.

The National Statistical Institute of Spain, one of the countries hardest hit by the real estate crisis, released data on the unemployment rates that this country has seen over the course of the year. The percentage of those out of work had reached 11.3 percent by August of 2008, the last month for which the NSI has data available.

As in the United States, Spain’s unemployment rate has climbed — it stood at 9.4 percent in February of 2008. It is the first time since November of 2007 that Spain has had more than 2.6 million people out of work at a given time, and economic authorities here are warning that those numbers may keep growing well into 2009.

The BLS also maintains data about the rate of unemployment in selected European countries. France and Germany had 8.3 and 7.4 percent, respectively, of their populations out of work in August 2008. France’s unemployment rate has increased from 8.0 percent at the start of 2008, whereas Germany’s has actually decreased from 7.8 percent.

The EU as a whole has had a 6.7 percent unemployment rate throughout 2008. While unemployment rates in the EU have mostly held steady from March of 2007 to March of 2008, when this particular study was done, several countries did see steady increases. Spain and Ireland had the highest jumps in unemployment between 2007 and 2008, Spain from 8.1 percent to 9.3 percent and Ireland from 4.6 percent to 5.6 percent.

According to one study done by Eurostat (the Statistical Office of the European Communities), the countries in the so-called Eurozone (Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Cyprus and Malta) have been hit harder than the larger EU27, which includes a broader range of EU member countries. Within this group, the number of unemployed people jumped by 25,000 in July of 2008, with the highest rates once again in Spain (11 percent) and Slovakia (10.3 percent).

So what does all of this mean? Well, it would seem to mean that some of the EU nations are suffering the effects of the global economic crisis more than others, in the same way some areas of the U.S. have been harder hit.

At least in Spain’s case, where the housing market followed a similar pattern to that of the United States in the years and months leading up to the proverbial bubble-bursting, the effects (rising unemployment rate, for instance) are very similar. In the EU, though, where individual bailout plans must be applied to each member country’s particular situation, addressing every country’s individual economic needs will certainly prove interesting.

-TP

Tags: global market, unemployment rate.