Employment Recession and Recovery in the 50 States

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to provide a report of record of the employment performance of the 50 states during the Great Recession and the ensuing recovery period. The analysis presented here uses U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data to consistently measure the changes in private-sector jobs over the course of the employment cycle from July 2003 through June 2011, a period covering economic expansion, recession, and recovery.The nation lost 8,838,000 private-sector jobs over the 25-month period from January 2008 to February 2010, a rate of loss of 7.6 percent. In the job-recovery period from February 2010 through June 2011, the nation regained 2,230,000 private-sector jobs, a rate of increase of 2.1 percent and a recovery of 25.2 percent of all the private-sector job losses of the recession.The first part of this report measures the private-sector employment performance of each of the states and regions of the country. It also measures the shares of each state and region of the national job losses and job gains during the various phases of the employment cycle.The second part of the report measures the duration of the employment recession, the number of private-sector jobs lost, and the rate of job decline for each state. It then measures the duration of the job-recovery period, the number of private-sector jobs gained, the rate of private-sector job gain, and the percentages of job losses that have been recovered for each state. These rates and durations of decline and recovery are compared with the analogous national rates.Rutgers Regional Report Issue Paper 28This report was published as Issue Paper Number 28, September 2011, in Rutgers Regional Report