The Bureau of Labor Statistics released May state-level employment numbers today and the news was again good for Oklahoma. The state’s unemployment rate fell from 5.6 percent to 5.3 percent, continuing a trend that has seen the rate fall a full 1.6 percentage points in just six months. Oklahoma’s unemployment rate is now the 4th lowest in the nation, behind only North Dakota (3.2 percent), South Dakota and New Hampshire (both 4.8 percent). The national unemployment rate stood at 9.1 percent in May, up from 9.0 percent in April.

However, while declining unemployment is encouraging, the jobs numbers reported by the BLS were more ambiguous. There were 1,555,200 jobs in Oklahoma in May, an increase of a mere 3,500 from April. Over the past twelve months, the economy has added less than 22,000 jobs.

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This week, OK Policy put out the latest edition of Numbers You Need, our monthly bulletin of key economic and budget indicators for the state. Our main headline was of an economic recovery stuck in neutral. While there are certain encouraging signs of the state emerging from out of the Great Recession, the downturn is continuing to hit segments of the population hard. High levels of distress can be seen, for example, in record numbers of home foreclosures and continued growth in food stamp and Medicaid caseloads. But it is the persistence of high rates of unemployment and slow job growth that provide the strongest and most worrisome indicator of the distances still needed to be traveled to a solid, broad-based recovery.

Oklahoma’s unemployment rate hit 6.8 percent in June, rising one-tenth of one percent for the second straight month and falling just short of the highest rate registered during this recession (6.9 percent from August to October 2009). Oklahoma’s unemployment in June remained well below the national rate of 9.5 percent and was 8th lowest among the states.  However, over the past six months, the national unemployment rate has dropped 0.5 percentage points, while Oklahoma’s rate has remained unchanged.

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