In early May, RDS published the first in a series of posts on America’s unemployment story in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

We recently updated our interactive unemployment workbook found in Tableau. Here’s the LINK to the workbook.

While the unemployment story has improved, more than 20 million Americans are still out of work. To summarize:

  • Initial claims dropped by 14% in April and by 69% in May compared to the previous month.  (Remember this is compared to the previous month, so claims themselves were still quite high). 
  • In regards to percent change from 2019 to 2020, Georgia is now the most impacted state, closely followed by New Hampshire and Florida. 
  • Although US rates dropped from 14.7% to 13.3% in May, several states saw increases in unemployment rates in May.  These include: MN, MA, CT, DE, and FL. 
  • Overall unemployment rates dropped in May for all educations levels & genders.
  • Overall unemployment rates dropped for Hispanic/Latino (18.9% to 17.6%) and White (14.2% to 12.4%) from April to May.  However, we saw an increase in unemployment rates for that time period for both Black/African American (16.7% to 16.8%) and Asian (14.5% to 15.0%).
  • Nearly all industries and occupations saw decreases in unemployment rates from April to May.  However, it is worth noting:
    • The unemployment rate in Leisure and Hospitality is at 35.9%, down from 39.3% in April
    • Related, the unemployment rate for Food Preparation and Serving is now at 36.5%, down from 41.8% in April
    • Unemployment in Personal Care and Services is still high at 33.4%l, although down from its April high of 39.3%
  • All age groups saw an overall decrease in rates from April to May.  Figure

Again, here is the LINK to our Tableau Public Unemployment Workbook.

The Unemployment Workbook is included in our recently-launched ECONOMETRIX HUB portal on Tableau Public. In addition to unemployment, Econometrix looks at historical trends in mortgage applications, 30-year fixed mortgage rates, home sales and consumer loan charge-off rates.

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