Monday, March 14, 2016

These Are the Only U.S. States That are Losing Jobs

Jeffry Bartash notes:
Only six U.S. states lost jobs from January 2015 to January 2016. The common thread? They are all large energy producers.

North Dakota was the biggest job loser: Employment fell by seasonally adjusted 21,000, or 4.5%, to 455,000....

North Dakota and the other five states to lose jobs are all big producers or refiners of oil, coal and natural gas. Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Alaska join the dubious list.

West Virginia has been hard hit by a tighter coal regulations promoted by the Obama White House and by a related shift among electricity producers to cleaner —and importantly, cheaper — natural gas.

Employment in the West Virginia coal industry peaked at 35,700 in the early stages of the U.S. economic recovery, but the number of jobs has sunk 36% in the past five years to an estimated 22,800 in January.
Bottom line: This is a retrenchment in the energy sector, not a recession. A recession results in a cluster of errors across the capital goods sectors,

2 comments:

  1. What was the unemployment rate in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge? Was that a recession?

    ReplyDelete
  2. So even the high tax states like California, Connecticut, Illinois, etc, are gaining jobs?

    ReplyDelete