Armand Jackson

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly Employment Situation Summary for May 2022 and it shows promising statistics. In May, total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 390,000 and the unemployment rate remained at 3.6 percent with the number of unemployed persons at 6.0 million. Various industries experienced job growth like the leisure and hospitality industry by 84,000, professional and business services by 75,000, and transportation and warehousing industries by 47,000, however, employment in retail trade declined by 61,000. These numbers are close to the pre-pandemic values of February 2020 where the unemployment rate was at 3.5 percent with the number of unemployed persons at 5.7 million.

This seems to be the positive trend in the labor market throughout 2022 so far, even with rising inflation. Unemployment rates were already lower in 13 states and the District of Columbia and remained stable in 37 other states back in April. In comparison to April of 2021, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had experienced decreases in unemployment rates and the national unemployment rate was 2.4 percentage points lower than in April 2021. Arizona, for instance, had 3,044,900 employed persons in April of 2022, an increase of 4 percent in comparison to the 2,928,400 employed in April of 2021.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Arizona shows how much progress has been made in the state in 2022 so far to recover the labor market to pre-pandemic levels. As of April of 2022, Arizona’s unemployment rate is 3.2 percent, with about 115,000 unemployed persons; about 181,300 employed persons in the construction industry, 191,000 in manufacturing, 608,500 in trade, transportation, and utilities, 245,000 in financial activities, 453,600 in professional and business services, 475,600 in education and health services, 327,600 in leisure & hospitality and 406,400 in government services.