Only four states—Alaska, North Dakota, Texas, and Louisiana—have created enough jobs since the recovery to get back to where they were prior to the recession. A couple more, New York and West Virginia, are expected to return to their prerecession peak later this year.
However, according to Steven Frable of IHS Global Insight, the majority of states still won’t get there until after 2014.
Eighteen states still are more than 5% below their 2007 employment levels, and the two worst-hit states — Nevada and Michigan — are still more than 10% off their peaks. Frable estimates those two states, as well as Rhode Island which has seen sluggish job growth, won’t return to prerecession peaks until sometime after 2017.
Clearly, in the midst of the Second Great Depression, it’s going to be a long and winding road back to peak employment in many of the United States.
