State Unemployment Data from January

The state level data was just released. Delaware’s nonfarm seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 6.7%, a shocking 1% increase from December 2008. Yes, unemployment jumped a full one percent in a month. To give you some perspective, the unemployment is up 2.8% since January 2008. So over one third of the change from last year occurred between December and January.

For lovers of actual numbers, Delaware has lost 15,300 jobs since January 2008.

The surprise is the increases in the level of employment in the region.

The largest over-the-month increases in the level of employment were reported by Maryland (+6,000), the District of Columbia (+5,800), and New Hampshire (+4,100). The District of Columbia experienced the largest over-the-month percentage increase in employment (+0.8 percent), followed by New Hampshire (+0.6 percent), Maine (+0.3 percent), and Hawaii, Maryland, and Montana (+0.2 percent each).