WASHINGTON — Maine and nine other states haven’t regained all the jobs they lost in the Great Recession, even after six and a half years of recovery. Others have seen only modest gains.
U.S. Labor Department figures help illustrate the uneven nature of the economic rebound since the Great Recession ended in June 2009. They also suggest why many Americans feel the improvement has passed them by despite data indicating the economy has recovered, a discrepancy that could be fueling much of the support for insurgent presidential candidates such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Wyoming had 3 percent fewer non-farm payroll jobs last month than it did in December 2007, when the recession began, the Labor Department said Friday. That is the biggest percentage decline among the states. Alabama’s job total trails its pre-recession level by 2.7 percent, followed by New Mexico, where job totals are 2.6 percent lower.
Maine had an estimated 613,300 non-farm payroll jobs in February, up by 5,800 jobs from a year earlier, according to state labor data released Friday. But that is still 1.2 percent below the 620,700 non-farm jobs reported in December 2007.
New Jersey has nearly 1 percent fewer jobs than it did at the end of 2007, and Missouri is just below its pre-recession level. The other four states are: Mississippi, Nevada, Connecticut and West Virginia.
Other states have notched very small gains that likely trail population growth. Illinois has 8,600 more jobs than it did in December 2007, a gain of just 0.1 percent. Arizona’s job count is up just 9,200, or 0.3 percent. And Ohio has added 58,100 jobs, or 1.1 percent.
All those gains are far below the 4 percent increase in jobs nationwide from December 2007 through February 2016, according to government figures.
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