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Jobs

People in States with Low Unemployment Like Job Prospects

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

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A new poll from Gallup shows that people who live in North Dakota report the best hiring situations among their employers, compared with people in any other state. With an index of 34, North Dakota edges out Nebraska (27), Oklahoma (25), South Dakota (25) and Utah (25). A look at unemployment numbers among these states shows that they are among those with the lowest jobless rates. People who have jobs appear to like the job prospects of those around them, what Gallup defines as workers who say their “companies are hiring and expanding the size of their workforce.”

In June, the unemployment rate in North Dakota was 2.9%. Many economists believe that unemployment is 5% in a normal economy. North Dakota apparently has more jobs than people to fill them. Unemployment in Nebraska was 3.8% in June. The states in which people report the most positive impressions of job prospects have similarly low unemployment rates.

The comparison works when the Gallup numbers are measured against state with high unemployment. At the bottom of the polling firm’s survey is Oregon, where unemployment is 8.5%, New York, where it is 8.9%, and New Jersey, where the figure is 9.6%.

This kind of research does not have much value. It tells people what they already know. People with jobs like the prospects of those around them more than people who are unemployed do.

Methodology: Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking January 2 to June 30, 2012, with a random sample of 100,406 working adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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