US Counties With the Lowest Unemployment Rates
3,221 US counties ranked by unemployment rate, from lowest to highest. First are Brule County, SD (1.3%), Loving County, TX (1.3%) and Bowman County, ND (1.4%). 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 lowest counties
Every state, lowest first
Each state’s own published figure, not an average of its counties.
| Rank | State | % |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Dakota | 1.82% |
| 2 | Vermont | 1.94% |
| 3 | North Dakota | 2.05% |
| 4 | Maryland | 2.24% |
| 5 | New Hampshire | 2.28% |
| 6 | Nebraska | 2.3% |
| 7 | Alabama | 2.47% |
| 8 | Maine | 2.65% |
| 9 | Virginia | 2.7% |
| 10 | Utah | 2.72% |
| 11 | Montana | 2.73% |
| 12 | Minnesota | 2.78% |
| 13 | Wisconsin | 2.83% |
| 14 | Hawaii | 2.85% |
| 15 | Kansas | 2.88% |
| 16 | Wyoming | 2.92% |
| 17 | Florida | 2.94% |
| 18 | Iowa | 2.97% |
| 19 | Rhode Island | 2.98% |
| 20 | South Carolina | 2.99% |
| 21 | Missouri | 3.11% |
| 22 | Mississippi | 3.12% |
| 23 | Oklahoma | 3.14% |
| 24 | Arkansas | 3.15% |
| 25 | Idaho | 3.19% |
| 26 | Connecticut | 3.2% |
| 27 | Georgia | 3.24% |
| 28 | Tennessee | 3.25% |
| 29 | Colorado | 3.28% |
| 30 | Indiana | 3.42% |
| 31 | Massachusetts | 3.49% |
| 32 | North Carolina | 3.49% |
| 33 | Ohio | 3.65% |
| 34 | Pennsylvania | 3.67% |
| 35 | New Mexico | 3.68% |
| 36 | Arizona | 3.7% |
| 37 | Louisiana | 3.72% |
| 38 | Oregon | 3.79% |
| 39 | West Virginia | 3.86% |
| 40 | Delaware | 3.91% |
| 41 | Michigan | 3.92% |
| 42 | Texas | 4.01% |
| 43 | New York | 4.04% |
| 44 | Washington | 4.21% |
| 45 | Kentucky | 4.25% |
| 46 | Alaska | 4.26% |
| 47 | New Jersey | 4.32% |
| 48 | Illinois | 4.49% |
| 49 | California | 4.72% |
| 50 | District of Columbia | 4.86% |
| 51 | Nevada | 5.13% |
| 52 | Puerto Rico | 5.89% |
More on unemployment rate
- US Counties With the Highest 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.