US Counties With the Highest Unemployment Rates
3,221 US counties ranked by unemployment rate, from highest to lowest. First are Imperial County, CA (17.6%), Kusilvak Census Area, AK (14.8%) and Maricao Municipio, PR (13.3%). The middle one of the 3,221 has 3.5%.
What this measures
Unemployed people as a percentage of the labor force (people working or looking for work), not of the whole population. A place where few people look for work at all can have low unemployment and still have few people working. Source: BLS LAUS.
For most measures, a national ranking mostly sorts places by income and by how urban they are. Each county’s own page compares it with the 50 counties most like it instead, which is often the fairer view.
The 100 highest counties
Every state, highest first
Each state’s own published figure, not an average of its counties.
| Rank | State | % |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Puerto Rico | 5.89% |
| 2 | Nevada | 5.13% |
| 3 | District of Columbia | 4.86% |
| 4 | California | 4.72% |
| 5 | Illinois | 4.49% |
| 6 | New Jersey | 4.32% |
| 7 | Alaska | 4.26% |
| 8 | Kentucky | 4.25% |
| 9 | Washington | 4.21% |
| 10 | New York | 4.04% |
| 11 | Texas | 4.01% |
| 12 | Michigan | 3.92% |
| 13 | Delaware | 3.91% |
| 14 | West Virginia | 3.86% |
| 15 | Oregon | 3.79% |
| 16 | Louisiana | 3.72% |
| 17 | Arizona | 3.7% |
| 18 | New Mexico | 3.68% |
| 19 | Pennsylvania | 3.67% |
| 20 | Ohio | 3.65% |
| 21 | North Carolina | 3.49% |
| 22 | Massachusetts | 3.49% |
| 23 | Indiana | 3.42% |
| 24 | Colorado | 3.28% |
| 25 | Tennessee | 3.25% |
| 26 | Georgia | 3.24% |
| 27 | Connecticut | 3.2% |
| 28 | Idaho | 3.19% |
| 29 | Arkansas | 3.15% |
| 30 | Oklahoma | 3.14% |
| 31 | Mississippi | 3.12% |
| 32 | Missouri | 3.11% |
| 33 | South Carolina | 2.99% |
| 34 | Rhode Island | 2.98% |
| 35 | Iowa | 2.97% |
| 36 | Florida | 2.94% |
| 37 | Wyoming | 2.92% |
| 38 | Kansas | 2.88% |
| 39 | Hawaii | 2.85% |
| 40 | Wisconsin | 2.83% |
| 41 | Minnesota | 2.78% |
| 42 | Montana | 2.73% |
| 43 | Utah | 2.72% |
| 44 | Virginia | 2.7% |
| 45 | Maine | 2.65% |
| 46 | Alabama | 2.47% |
| 47 | Nebraska | 2.3% |
| 48 | New Hampshire | 2.28% |
| 49 | Maryland | 2.24% |
| 50 | North Dakota | 2.05% |
| 51 | Vermont | 1.94% |
| 52 | South Dakota | 1.82% |
More on unemployment rate
- US Counties With the Lowest Unemployment Rates
- Unemployment rate by US county: map by year and what it goes with
A ranking describes places, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All US rankings.