The United States gained 199,000 jobs in December and due to this uptick, WalletHub released updated rankings regarding the states whose unemployment rates are bouncing back to highlight which states have had the best recovery.
The 50 states and the District of Columbia were compared in order to identify the states with successful bounce-back. The ratings were based on five key metrics that compare unemployment rate statistics from the latest month for which data is available, which is Dec. 2021, to dates in 2019 and 2020.
From this study, Utah was ranked the second-best state for unemployment rate recovery, coming in just behind Nebraska. On the other hand, the two states ranked the worst for recovery were Nevada and Hawaii. There were 31,817 Utahns unemployed in Dec. 2021 versus 39,216 in Dec. of 2019. The unemployment rate for Utah sat at 1.9% in Dec. 2021.
For the adjusted continued claims, there were 9,881 in Dec. 2019, which dropped to 7,536 in Dec. 2021. Overall, the United States unemployment rate sits at 3.9%, which is noted to be higher than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic but much lower than the high of 14.7% in April of 2020.
It was stated that by the end of 2021, there were notable gains in various sectors, including transportation and warehousing, leisure and hospitality, construction, manufacturing, and professional and business services.