These 10 states show slowest coronavirus job market recovery

The number of jobs lost due to the coronavirus shutdown continue to mount, with the latest weekly total of Americans applying for unemployment benefits coming in at 1.3 million. Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman breaks it down.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Right now, I want to start the show here on the update we got in terms of the unemployment picture here in the US as initial jobless claims came in for the week ended July 11th at 1.3 million new claims versus the 1.25 million that economists were expecting. That number marked the 15th consecutive drop in terms of that headline jobless-claims number. It's a steady recovery from the March peak, if you remember, of 6.8 million new claims. But still, as we've kind of stressed here in the historical context, still nearly double the roughly 700,000 weekly claims filed at the worst point during the Great Recession back in '09.

Also should highlight continuing claims on that front for the week ended July 4. Of course, those are the claims that lag by about a week. Coming in at 17.3 million versus the 17.5 million expected, so a little bit better there.

And on a state-by-state basis, just because we like highlighting how this recovery is looking-- of course, we've stayed stubbornly at around that 1.3 million mark for the last few weeks here, though it's come down slightly. But still, again, double what we've seen at the worst point in '09.

So when we look at the state recoveries here, just want to stress some of those states in terms of the last nine weeks of this recovery versus the first nine weeks when this pandemic hit and looking at how jobless claims have changed over those nine-week periods. Oklahoma, Alaska, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida-- of course, Florida being one of those states that we've been watching in terms of rising coronavirus case counts. All those states showing less than a 45% change in terms of the first nine weeks of the pandemic versus the last nine weeks in terms of showing a drop in jobless claims there. So a muted recovery in those states.

On the flip side, we are seeing a pretty strong recovery in Michigan and Rhode Island, both showing more than 75% drop in terms of those first nine weeks versus the last nine weeks.