Utilizing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we were able to assemble an interactive map of the United States with each state’s respective unemployment rate for the years 1976 to 2023.
Examining unemployment rates by state for this 47-year period reveals very clear patterns. First, the majority of U.S. states experienced their highest peaks of unemployment in the two most devastating recessions since the Great Depression: the 18-month “Great Recession” from December 2007 to June 2009, and the 16-month recession from July 1981 to November 1982 (this was the second “dip” in the early-1980s “double dip” recession).
There are also some less obvious patterns that only emerge upon closer inspection. For example, in Alaska, Louisiana, and Texas, for the period 1976 to 2023, their peak year of unemployment occurred in 1986, at 11.1% in Alaska, 12.5% in Louisiana, and 8.8% in Texas, beating out the early-1980s recession, the “Great Recession”, and the pandemic-induced recession. Why 1986? These three states’ economies at the time, and still now, were heavily dependent on the oil industry and the 1980s witnessed the famous “oil glut,” with prices falling from $27 a barrel to below $10 ($72 to $27 in 2022 dollars) in 1986.