Kansas tops states with the highest insured unemployment rates

Yahoo Finance's Zack Guzman breaks down the states with the highest insured unemployment rates.

Video Transcript

- Zack, you know, we haven't talked much about the unemployment claims, our initial jobless claims that came out today. Certainly that hasn't had a significant impact, at least in the moves in the markets, but another 900,000 workers roughly filing for unemployment benefits. It really does feel like a broken record every week. But it feels like that recovery is really stalling because of just the type of spread that we're seeing across the country right now.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, it's kind of crazy to think that, you know, 900,000 Americans filing for unemployment, and we're not talking about it until the end of the show. And that's just because we've seen the numbers be so high for so long that you kind of become numb to it. And yes, it was better than 935,000 economists were expecting.

But keep in mind, we never topped 700,000 back during the Great Recession. So we're still running at historically high numbers of Americans filing for unemployment. When you stack that up, consider that that's not just this week, but it's been week after week after week for almost a year now. You see some pretty high unemployment rates when you look at it state by state.

And it's interesting to maybe highlight the fact that the states that have been suffering the highest unemployment rates have gone in flux. Some states have improved, notable that Hawaii has now dropped out of the top 10. We saw that happen a few weeks ago. But still consider the fact that that state implemented some pretty serious rules in terms of traveling and having to test negative before you traveled to Hawaii to really get that issue under control.

Obviously, it's harder for other states in the US to maybe do that now, considering how widespread the coronavirus is in the country. But just take a look at some of those states leading here. I mean, we talk about Kansas at 7.5% insured unemployment rate. That's of course, the measure of citizens there on unemployment insurance relative to the labor force, 7.5% the highest in the US right now, 7.2% following that in Pennsylvania.

But obviously I mean, this is going to take different states, different times to rebound and come back, depending on the industries. We've talked about Nevada also being a state levered to travel, but just interesting to see this play out on a state level basis, as President Biden steps into office to really implement some of his policies.