FRED Blog — One rate does not rule them all : Unemployment is uneven across U.S. counties

The graph above shows the annual civilian unemployment rate from 1948 to 2018, and here are some highlights: Ten years ago, after the Great Recession, the U.S. unemployment rate peaked at 9.6%. (The only higher unemployment rate in this series was 9.7%, in 1982.) It gradually came down to 3.9% in 2018, the lowest in fifty years. (The rate in 1969 was 3.5%.)

But these national unemployment numbers mask the variation that exists across different regions in the U.S. Fortunately, we have GeoFRED to paint a clearer picture: The map below shows the unemployment rate for 2018 for 3,133 U.S. counties. The counties are split into two equally sized groups according to their unemployment rates: Those with lower unemployment are in blue, and those with higher unemployment are in red. Specifically, the blue group had a rate lower than 3.87%, and the red group had a rate between 3.87% and the maximum of 18.08%. (By the way, all counties in New Hampshire are blue and all counties in Arizona are red.) 

FRED Blog
One rate does not rule them all : Unemployment is uneven across U.S. counties