September State Unemployment Updated

Posted Wednesday, October 21 2009

September state unemployment data was released by the BLS this morning. The state unemployment rate table page now has sort capability and is probably the easiest way to see the all of the numbers at once. Michigan's unemployment rate continues to be the highest in the land followed by Nevada, Rhode Island and California. Of the three, California was the only state which posted an improved unemployment rate month over month moving from 12.3% in September to 12.2% in August. North Dakota and South Dakota continue to report to lowest unemployment rates in the nation.

Household income by state and for the US as a whole has been added to the site since last we spoke. I realize that income is a pretty pedestrian dataset, but it's critical for normalizing other measures on a local level, so I had to get it into the site workings relatively quickly. At the same time, there are all different kinds of income measures, so I hope to highlight more as time goes along.

Having said that, I've put aside adding metro income data for the time being as I'm working on a New York City data project for the NYC BigApps competition. I'm a New York City resident, so I expected to dig into some of the cities vast datasets at some point, but the competition has pushed up the priority a bit. It's a bit more fun this way. I'll probably have something up for that by mid November.