Mississippi Job Watch
May 10th, 2011
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the most recent monthly jobs numbers for the United States showing that the nation added 244,000 jobs. While jobs data for April in Mississippi will not be released for a few more days, a review of the most recently available monthly jobs data reveals that Mississippi has added 12,000 jobs since January 2010.
The charts below provide a side by side look at monthly job changes in Mississippi and the U.S. since January 2010. Mississippi added more than 2,000 in four of the six months but experienced a substantial drop in January 2011. From February to March 2011, Mississippi experienced a slight down tick in employment.
Click to enlarge
Source: Economic Policy Institute JobWatch. Seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll employment.
Job growth over the last 15 months is a positive sign, but growth is still not within reach of replacing all the jobs lost during the 2007 recession and thousands of Mississippi workers continue to experience periods of unemployment. Mississippi’s unemployment rate of 10.2 percent ranked 35th among other states and remained above the national rate of 8.8 percent in March.
In tomorrow’s Policy Matters blog, we will look back over unemployment throughout the 2007 recession with a particular focus on rates of unemployment among specific groups of Mississippi workers.
Source:
Bureau of Labor Statistics and Local Unemployment Release for March 2011. Economic Policy Institute’s Job Watch Data.
Author:
Sarah Welker, Policy Analyst
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