July 2022: MSA Unemployment Rates; Minneapolis, Salt Lake City & San Jose lowest (best, state)

[18Montclair]

Actually we are doing very well all in all, remember 5% is considered full employment and only a few are slightly above that.

https://www.bls.gov/web/metro/laulrgma.htm

[TheTimidBlueBars]

So I have some idea of what factors lead to an area having a high unemployment rate (major industries leaving cf. the Rust Belt, large disinvested poor/minority areas that businesses don't want to move to, low educational attainment in a job market that increasingly demands a bachelor's for everything), but what causes low unemployment? Is it just not having those things?

SLC seems especially surprising because of Utah's high fertility rate, which I'd think would lead to an overly large labor market.

The lack of apparent influence of COL is especially surprising. The Twin Cities are one of the most affordable "urban" areas out there, while in SF, families making less than $120k are legally considered "low-income" and qualify for housing assistance. Minimum wages also don't have an obvious effect here, nor does the rough % of foreign-born residents.

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by TheTimidBlueBars

So I have some idea of what factors lead to an area having a high unemployment rate (major industries leaving cf. the Rust Belt, large disinvested poor/minority areas that businesses don't want to move to, low educational attainment in a job market that increasingly demands a bachelor's for everything), but what causes low unemployment? Is it just not having those things?

SLC seems especially surprising because of Utah's high fertility rate, which I'd think would lead to an overly large labor market.

The lack of apparent influence of COL is especially surprising. The Twin Cities are one of the most affordable "urban" areas out there, while in SF, families making less than $120k are legally considered "low-income" and qualify for housing assistance. Minimum wages also don't have an obvious effect here, nor does the rough % of foreign-born residents.

Areas with high intake of foreign immigrants do have higher unemployment rates, since a lot of those people are looking for employment when they come in before they move around the country. This artificially inflates unemployment rates in those metros. Metros where this is the most pronounced are NYC, LA, and Houston.

Currently, the unemployment rates are rather wonky anyway, because the total labor participation rate is at a historic low, so it is hard/tricky to compare it with pre-2020 statistics.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by Gantz

Currently, the unemployment rates are rather wonky anyway, because the total labor participation rate is at a historic low, so it is hard/tricky to compare it with pre-2020 statistics.

Anyone know why this is?

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

Anyone know why this is?

Good question because it doesn't make a lot of sense what's happening. I'm a hiring manager for my company and despite throwing all kinds of incentives at people and it being a major national service provider I've had a helluva time hiring anyone for the last 2 years.

My guess is that it boils down to more people starting their own ventures since the pandemic began. I know a ton of people that got fed up with juggling corporate life and kids and used it as pivot to what they really want to do.

I also (and this is just my opinion with no data or studies to back it up) that the models haven't accounted properly for the 1 million plus people that have died in the last 2 and a half years. It's strange people don't ever think about this. Sure, COVID before the vaccines impacted older folks more but a good chunk of those 1 million (if not the majority) were working age people. That's a lot of people to remove from the workforce in a short period of time.

[CXT2000]

I always take unemployment rates with a grain of salt considering the current labour shortages/participation rates being lower than usual, in addition to other valid criticisms of these rates.

I would love to see real unemployment data in all metropolitan areas.

[Duderino]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

I also (and this is just my opinion with no data or studies to back it up) that the models haven't accounted properly for the 1 million plus people that have died in the last 2 and a half years. It's strange people don't ever think about this. Sure, COVID before the vaccines impacted older folks more but a good chunk of those 1 million (if not the majority) were working age people. That's a lot of people to remove from the workforce in a short period of time.

Exactly this.

So many people also don't realize that the childcare industry has been absoltutely decimated over the past couple of years, as well. The expense and lack of availability is a huge issue for many.

It's forced a lot of parents of young children into either limiting their hours or at least one parent foregoing work altogether.

Combine this with a wave of retirements that's going on now, and fewer young adults entering the workforce, we're looking at a very different future that we're all going to have to adapt to.

[Nemean]

Probably to no one's interest but my own:

Breaking it down in roughly equal pop regions

Spoiler

CA HI

Spoiler

2.2 San Jose
2.3 San Francisco
3.1 San Diego
3.3 Sacramento
3.9 Inland Empire
4.5 Los Angeles

San Jose/San Fran > Norcal/Socal secondary cities > LA

It sorta make sense. Covid led to lots of tech work, and remote work led to a lot of people moving away from the main cities. However, that doesn't usually apply to employment, too, as usually popular move-to places end up having a slight increase in unemployment due to that. Overall, CA looks to be roughly representative of the country as a whole. Everywhere is still below 5.0 (only Cleveland, Memphis and Las Vegas are above 5.0).

AK WA OR ID MT WY ND SD NV UT CO NM AZ

Spoiler

2.1 Salt Lake City
3.2 Seattle
3.3 Denver
3.4 Phoenix
3.6 Portland
5.6 Las Vegas

Mostly good and pretty average overall after taking out outliers SLC and LV.

MN WI IL IA MO NE KS OK

Spoiler

2.0 Minneapolis
3.1 Oklahoma City
3.2 Kansas City
3.2 St. Louis
3.9 Milwaukee
4.8 Chicago

Minneapolis looks like an outlier for the region as a whole. Milwaukee and Chicago fall in line with other cities on the Great Lakes though. One of the best performing regions

MI IN OH PA

Spoiler

3.2 Indianapolis
3.5 Detroit
3.7 Columbus
3.9 Cincinnati
4.4 Philadelphia
4.7 Pittsburgh
5.2 Cleveland

Detroit's a slight outlier in a nice way for the older Great Lakes cities. Overall, towards the bottom of the pack, but still historically good.

NY VT NH ME MA CT RI NJ

Spoiler

3.1 Boston
3.2 Providence
3.7 Rochester
4.0 Buffalo
4.4 Hartford
4.7 New York

It's been nice to see Providence/Rhode Island silently starting to stand out more in lots of little stats (places people are moving to, for example), but overall, the region's just below average.

KY WV VA MD DE DC TN NC

Spoiler

3.1 Nashville
3.1 Raleigh
3.1 Richmond
3.3 Hampton Roads
3.5 Charlotte
3.5 Washington
3.7 Louisville
4.1 Baltimore
5.4 Memphis

I'm surprised how middle of the pack this is, especially that it did worse than every city in the AL/GA/SC/FL section.
I had divided regions based off state population was surprised that one region had 5 cities, five had 6 cities, and one had 7. It's a bit of a bummer that this one is a bit off average with 9.

AL GA SC FL

Spoiler

2.6 Miami
2.7 Tampa
2.8 Atlanta
2.8 Birmingham
2.8 Jacksonville
3.0 Orlando

The best of the bunch overall. The worst, Orlando, is better than the best showing of half the other regions.

TX AR LA MS

Spoiler

3.1 Austin
3.8 Dallas
4.0 San Antonio
4.8 Houston
5.0 New Orleans

Considering Memphis is basically in this category, too, it's a surprisingly bad showing. Though it's still historically pretty good.

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

I also (and this is just my opinion with no data or studies to back it up) that the models haven't accounted properly for the 1 million plus people that have died in the last 2 and a half years. It's strange people don't ever think about this. Sure, COVID before the vaccines impacted older folks more but a good chunk of those 1 million (if not the majority) were working age people. That's a lot of people to remove from the workforce in a short period of time.

The COVID deaths should've been accounted for properly in the models, since the census data does account for them properly. Even then, the labor participation rate drop far exceeds COVID deaths, even if you include literally all deaths and assume every singe person that died was below 65 years old. The last time we saw these kinds of labor participation rate numbers were back when most of the women (half of the population) were not in the workforce and a lot of households were single income.

I agree with you that it is possible that the models do not account for people who started their own self-employment opportunities/gig workers/online hustles, etc.

You can also see weird things going on with productivity. The total productivity is dropping like a rock. If our real GDP is negative or borderline negative, yet unemployment rates are low, that means the overall productivity of the people employed has gone down a lot, since they are not producing enough inputs into the GDP. I can see this because a lot of people are still working from home with... rather questionable overall productivity.

So at the end of the day, you have a double whammy of low labor participation and lower productivity from the people who are still employed.

[Somnifor]

Productivity is basically just economic output divided by hours worked, so if employment remains the same while the GDP drops it will be expressed as falling productivity. It doesn't mean that the economy's potential productivity has fallen, but that circumstances dont allow businesses to use their workers to their maximum potential.