Taking the Job Gap to the State Level: A Closer Look at the August Employment Numbers

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Released: September 2011

Authors:

Adam Looney • Policy Director, The Hamilton Project; Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Michael Greenstone • Director, The Hamilton Project; 3M Professor of Environmental Economics, MIT; Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Introduction

The United States continues to confront a weak economic recovery. According to today’s employment report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, payroll employment stalled last month and the unemployment rate remained elevated at 9.1 percent. The private sector added 17,000 jobs while governments shed the same about — resulting in zero job growth. The most recent estimate of second quarter GDP was revised down from 1.3 percent to 1.0 percent following a first quarter increase of only 0.4 percent.

As policymakers focus their attention on strategies to create new jobs, The Hamilton Project continues to examine the magnitude of the current employment situation through our analysis of the nation’s “job gap.” This month we also explore the job gap by state and highlight a number of states that have been particularly hard hit by the Great Recession.