Arizona is having a successful recovery from new unemployment claims, with last week’s claims lower than in the same week in 2019, according to WalletHub. To identify which states’ workforces are experiencing the quickest recovery from COVID-19, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on changes in unemployment claims for several key benchmark weeks.
There are currently 8.7 million Americans unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in total, though, and here are some key stats from Wallethub for the latest week to get the full picture:
- There were 353,000 new unemployment claims nationwide, which is a lot fewer than the 6.1 million during the peak of the pandemic (a 94% reduction).
- Ten states had unemployment claims last week that were lower than before the pandemic: North Dakota, Arizona, Arkansas, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Vermont, New York, Kentucky and Louisiana.
- Surprisingly, four states (Virginia, New Mexico, Maryland, and Oregon) and D.C. had unemployment claims last week that were worse than the same week last year.
States Whose Unemployment Claims Are Recovering the Quickest
| State | Recovered Most Since Last Week | Recovered Most Since Start of COVID-19 Crisis |
| North Dakota | 1 | 17 |
| Kentucky | 2 | 15 |
| South Carolina | 3 | 2 |
| Arkansas | 4 | 10 |
| New York | 5 | 21 |
| Arizona | 6 | 7 |
| Iowa | 7 | 16 |
| Pennsylvania | 8 | 28 |
| South Dakota | 9 | 4 |
| Vermont | 10 | 45 |