Tulsa unemployment rate drops

The City of Tulsa had an unemployment rate of 8.1% in June, which is the 25th best in a national survey of U.S. cities by WalletHub.com.

That June figure was 117% higher than June of 2019 and 140% higher than January of 2020.

According to WalletHub.com, The national unemployment rate is 11.1%, which is 25% lower than the peak of 14.7% during the height of the pandemic.

“It will likely take a long time for the unemployment rate to return to the historic low it experienced prior to the coronavirus crisis,” according to WalletHub. “Some cities’ jobs have weathered the storm better than others, though.

WalletHub compared 180 cities based on the change in each city’s unemployment rate during June 2020 compared to June 2019 and January 2020. The report considered each city’s overall unemployment rate.

The report relies on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which recently disclosed that it misclassified many workers on temporary layoffs as “absent from work because of other reasons” rather than “unemployed.” Therefore, the real unemployment rate in June may be around 11% percent higher than reported. In Tulsa, that would be 8.97%.

Oklahoma City was No. 21 on the list with an unemployment rate of 7.3%.

Lexington/Fayette, Kentucky had the nation’s lowest unemployment rate at 4.3%. Detroit, Michigan, is No. 180 with an unemployment rate of 31.9%.

“There are too many unknowns to guess when the unemployment rate might return to more ‘normal’ levels,” said Professor Christine Moser of Western Michigan University. “They may never return to the pre-crisis level, which was historically low. I would say at least a year to get back to something that looks normal, but there are too many things that could happen between now and then.

“Unemployed people could look into acquiring new job skills that they can learn virtually. The jobs aren’t going to come back as quickly as people hope and there will be a second wave of unemployment because of the looming budget crisis in state and local governments.”

In the WalletHub study of “states whose unemployment claims are recovering the quickest,” Oklahoma is ranked as No. 19. Oklahoma had a 440% increase of unemployment claims from July 2019 to July 2020. That was an increase of 158% from January to July 2020.

Oregon had the highest recovery in that time period compared to the same time last year and Georgia had the worst. Maine had the highest recovery in July compared to January and Florida had the worst.

“With an average rank of 24 among the most recovered states, blue states had a better recovery from unemployment claims last week than red states, which rank 28 on average,” said Jill Gonzalez, WalletHub analyst. “The lower the number of the ranking, the bigger the state’s recovery was.”