Reply #9: The spreads are amazing - in both ways. [View All]

[dmallind]

Obviously like everyone else I have long known unemployment varies by area, but I have never looked at the whole list before and seen how widely and almost randomly it seems to vary.

Bismarck ND at 2.9 to El Centro CA at 27.9? One previous home of mine Lincoln NE at 3.8 and another, Detroit at 11.1? CA varies by 20% top to bottom? Certainly worker mobility must be part of it (and I don't think HSR is a viable answer given the other huge spread - between population centers, cool though it would be). I haven't seen any reports of the kind that brought workers to Detroit in the auto boom days or to CA in the dust bowl or the tech bubble, but I suspect that's because places like Lincoln and Bismarck are not dominated by single large industries, and job seekers are not exclusively one echelon either. I would imagine we will see a whole host of poulation shifts oncethis is settled.