18 states have lower unemployment rates in year ending March 2017

Unemployment rates in March 2017 were lower than in the previous month in 17 states and stable over the month in 33 states and the District of Columbia. Eighteen states had jobless rate decreases from a year earlier, and 32 states and the District had little or no change. The national unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point from February to 4.5 percent and was 0.5 point lower than in March 2016.

Colorado had the lowest unemployment rate in March, 2.6 percent, closely followed by Hawaii, 2.7 percent, and New Hampshire, North Dakota, and South Dakota, 2.8 percent each. The rates in Arkansas (3.6 percent), Colorado (2.6 percent), Maine (3.0 percent), and Oregon (3.8 percent) set new lows for this data series.

New Mexico had the highest jobless rate in March, 6.7 percent. In total, 19 states had unemployment rates lower than the U.S. figure of 4.5 percent, 7 states and the District of Columbia had higher rates, and 24 states had rates that were not appreciably different from the U.S. rate.

The state unemployment data are from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics program and are seasonally adjusted. Data for the most recent month are preliminary. To learn more, see "State Employment and Unemployment — March 2017" (HTML) (PDF). For more charts and tables related to state employment and unemployment, see the State unemployment chart package.