Call them the unrecovered—a handful of states where job markets, nine years later, are still struggling back to where they were before the recession.
That's true in Mississippi, where job numbers and the overall size of the economy remain below 2008 levels. Unlike states that have long since sprinted ahead, Mississippi is struggling with slow economic growth and slipping population in a place that's rarely at peak economic health.** The Mississippi economy is so bad that it is essentially a "ward of the Federal government."
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Not only Mississippi, but also Alabama, Michigan, New Mexico, and West Virginia are still short of pre-recession job levels by multiple measures. That contrasts with states including Colorado, North Dakota, Texas and Utah, where employment numbers have soared. Nationwide, job numbers surpassed pre-recession peaks in the middle of 2014, about the same time Mississippi was saddled with the nation's highest unemployment rate.**..............................................................................
Growth has long lagged in Mississippi, and jobless rates are high even in good times. The unemployment rate fell to 5 percent in March, the lowest since the U.S. Labor Department began the current system of measurement in 1976. But at the same time that the Magnolia State's unemployment rate was at a record low, it tied for the ninth highest among the states.**
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It is not just the number of jobs, but what they pay. Workers made an average of $669 a week in Meridian and surrounding Lauderdale County in late 2016, compared to $739 statewide and $1,027 nationwide.**
* http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/19/9-years-after-recession-began-some-states-still-unrecovered.html
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/11/infrastructure-program_23.html
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