West Virginia, Ohio, Rhode Island Lead Jump in Jobless Rates

West Virginia, Ohio, Rhode Island Lead Jump in Jobless Rates
By Courtney Schlisserman


May 22 (Bloomberg) -- West Virginia, Ohio and Rhode Island showed the biggest increases in unemployment in April as the worst job slump in the post-World War II era rippled through the economy.

The jobless rate in West Virginia climbed to 7.5 percent, up 0.7 point from March, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. It rose half a point in Rhode Island and Ohio, causing the latter to break above 10 percent. Unemployment in California dropped for the first time in almost three years, even as the state lost 63,700 jobs, the most of any state.

“We’re still having job losses pretty much everywhere,” said Marisa Di Natale, a senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “We would expect unemployment in all states to go much higher in coming months. It tends to keep rising even as job losses stop.”

Chrysler LLC’s bankruptcy and cutbacks at other companies, including General Motors Corp., indicate firings will remain elevated and hiring is unlikely to pick up. Federal Reserve policy makers and economists surveyed by Bloomberg News project the national jobless rate, which climbed to a 25-year high of 8.9 percent in April, will exceed 9 percent though 2010. .............(more)

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