Job Woes Linger in 29 States as U.S. Recovers Unevenly

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-30/job-woes-linger-in-29-states-as-u-s-recovers-unevenly.html

Kevin Yearout has added about 80 jobs to his Albuquerque, New Mexico, contracting company since July of last year. That still leaves him with less than half the number he employed in 2009, at the end of the deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

“It has been a very slow climb back,” said Yearout, 51, co-owner and chief executive officer of Yearout Mechanical Inc. “The economy went very south, very quickly.” With his commercial construction business hobbled by government funding cutbacks, “I never see the local economy getting back” to justify the prior level of jobs.

Even as the U.S. economy reached a milestone in May with employment exceeding the prerecession peak, 29 of 50 states have yet to match that accomplishment, according to Labor Department data compiled by Bloomberg. New Mexico, for instance, still had 4 percent fewer employed workers, ranking among the bottom 10 percent of states.

“This is not like any other recovery,” said John Herrmann, director of U.S. rate strategy at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities USA Inc., who tracks the gross domestic products of states. “There is a tremendous disparity, not a uniform recovery at all, with the performance of the economy much more skewed on a regional basis.”