June 19, 2012 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
State unemployment rates, May 2012
In May 2012, 27 states had unemployment rates that were significantly lower than the U.S. rate of 8.2 percent, while five states and the District of Columbia recorded rates significantly above it. The remaining 18 states had unemployment rates that were not statistically different from the U.S. rate.
![Unemployment rates by state, May 2012 (U.S. rate = 8.2 percent)](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120925083018im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2012/ted_20120619.png)
[Map data]
Nevada continued to record the highest unemployment rate among the states, 11.6 percent in May. Rhode Island and California posted the
next highest rates, 11.0 and 10.8 percent, respectively. North Dakota again registered the lowest jobless rate, 3.0 percent, followed by
Nebraska, 3.9 percent.
No state experienced a statistically significant unemployment rate change over the month. However, 28 states reported statistically
significant rate changes from a year earlier, all of which were decreases. The largest of these occurred in Michigan and Nevada
(−2.1 percentage points each) and Florida and Mississippi (−2.0 points each).
These unemployment data are from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics program. Unemployment rates for the most recent month are preliminary and subject to revision. For more information, see "Regional and State Unemployment — May 2012" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-12-1184.
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