5 Best & Worst States for Unemployment in 2022

When it comes to unemployment in America, the good news is that rates in general are low. As of June 2022, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the national unemployment rate was 3.6% for the fourth month in a row.

Historically, this is a quite a low rate, even when compared with prior boom years in the economy. It’s also a welcome relief after unemployment spiked to 14.8% in April 2020, in response to the coronavirus outbreak. That was the highest reading since measurements began over 70 years ago, in 1948.

But, as the economy has bounced back rapidly from the depths of the coronavirus recession, companies are seemingly hiring anyone they can find.

Of course, the employment situation can often vary by quite a bit on a regional basis. To compare how the labor market is doing in different parts of the country, GOBankingRates analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics data for all 50 states, then broke that information down into the top and bottom five states in terms of unemployment rates. Here are the results of that study.

The top five states have exceedingly low unemployment rates and correspondingly low numbers of actual unemployed Americans. States are ranked in reverse order, with the lowest unemployment rate coming last.

• May 2022 Unemployment Rate: 2.2%
• Unemployed: 73,911

• May 2022 Unemployment Rate: 2.1%
• Unemployed: 16,280

• May 2022 Unemployment Rate: 2.0%
• Unemployed: 34,061

• May 2022 Unemployment Rate: 2.0%
• Unemployed: 61,551

• May 2022 Unemployment Rate: 1.9%
• Unemployed: 19,916

Although unemployment rates across the board are low in America, some states still have relatively high levels of unemployment when compared with the national average. As with the top five states above, the bottom five are also listed in reverse order, with the highest unemployment rate at the bottom of the list.

• May 2022 Unemployment Rate: 4.6%
• Unemployed: 297,757

• May 2022 Unemployment Rate: 4.6%
• Unemployed: 297,505

• May 2022 Unemployment Rate: 4.7%
• Unemployed: 16,927

• May 2022 Unemployment Rate: 4.9%
• Unemployed: 74,171

• May 2022 Unemployment Rate: 5.1%
• Unemployed: 48,385

Methodology: For this piece, GOBankingRates looked at the May 2022 Bureau of Labor Statistics “Civilian labor force and unemployment by state and selected area, seasonally adjusted” to find each state’s (1) May 2022 unemployment rate and (2) number of unemployed. All data was collected and is up to date as of June 27, 2022.