The US has been steadily recovering from major pandemic-related job losses experienced in the spring of 2020.
However, not all states may get back to pre-pandemic levels of employment by the end of this year.
During the first wave of the pandemic, the US lost more than 22 million jobs in just March and April of last year. Overall, the US is still down 5.7 million jobs from February 2020 after gaining 943,000 in July. If the US continues to add as many jobs as it has on average over the last three months, it could take until February 2022 to get back to pre-pandemic employment.
Exactly when specific states and DC will recover varies. The new state unemployment and employment data released on Friday gives us a closer look at how long recovery could take. For some states, such as Montana and North Carolina, recovery could be just a few months away. For others, it may not be as quick.
Insider looked at changes in nonfarm payroll employment for every state and DC. We took the most recent three-month average changes, between May 2021 and July 2021, to see when states could get back to pre-pandemic nonfarm payrolls if they continue at that pace. Alaska, Wyoming, and Kentucky had negative three-month averages, so we weren't able to project when they could recover.
Some states have ended participation in federal unemployment benefits, including the extra $300 weekly unemployment benefits, earlier than the September expiration. One reason cited is to get Americans back into the labor force. As the latest state employment data showed, however, cutoff states and those not cutting unemployment benefits are making similar gains back.
"Full pandemic view shows how employment is rising at similar rates in cutoff and other states in recent months," Jed Kolko, chief economist at Indeed, wrote on Twitter after the release of the July data. "Job losses were more severe in non-cutoff states because they differ in many ways from cutoff states -- most importantly in their industry & occupation mix."
The following six charts take a look at when the states and DC could get back to pre-pandemic employment and recover job losses seen during the pandemic based on their three-month averages of job growth.