March Hiring Surge Spanned the Country -- Update
April 16 2021 - 12:33PM
Dow Jones News
By Danny Dougherty and Eric Morath
Hiring increased in 49 states across the country in March, with
large states such as California, Texas and New York adding the most
jobs.
Employers in leisure and hospitality, including at restaurants,
hotels and entertainment venues, accelerated hiring across the U.S.
That allowed some of the hardest-hit states, such as Hawaii, to see
strong job growth last month.
"Better health conditions and expanding reopenings will
strengthen and widen the breadth of state labor market recoveries,"
said Oren Klachkin, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.
"Fiscal stimulus will promote positive labor market dynamics
through the health crisis' final stages."
States that had relatively fewer pandemic-related restrictions,
are less densely populated or have fewer tourism-related jobs
tended to have more resilient labor markets in the past year.
Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, and Vermont all tied for the nation's
lowest unemployment rate, 2.9% each in March.
Those states lost a smaller share of jobs during the pandemic,
but job growth last month was slower than in California and New
York, according to the Labor Department.
The overall U.S. unemployment rate was 6% in March. The Labor
Department's report with state-level details is released about two
weeks after the national report.
Write to Eric Morath at eric.morath@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 16, 2021 12:18 ET (16:18 GMT)
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