The Birmingham, Alabama, and Salt Lake City metropolitan areas posted the lowest jobless rates in December among all US metro areas with populations of 1 million or more. The jobless rate was 3.5% in both areas, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
Las Vegas posted the highest jobless rate among large US metros in December at 10.4%. It was followed by the Detroit metropolitan area at 10.1%.
Among US metro areas of all sizes in December, the El Centro area in California posted the highest at 17.7%. The lowest was in Ames, Iowa, at 2.1%
The largest year-over-year unemployment rate increase was in the Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina metro area in Hawaii, which rose by 10.8 percentage points to 13.0%. The largest year-over-year decrease occurred in the Yuma, Arizona, metro area where the jobless rate fell by 1.9 percentage points to 12.4%.