Mississippi has some good things going on. But contrary to a recent press release from Gov. Tate Reeves’ office, its unemployment statistics are not among them.
The press release, citing a federal report, said the state’s unemployment rate reached a record-low 3% in March. (The Mississippi Department of Employment Security did even better, putting last month’s unemployment at 2.6%.) Those are indeed historically low numbers, but they mask a significant problem with the state’s work force.
Let’s acknowledge the positive news first. The governor pointed out that the state’s pre-kindergarten program has been recognized as one of the top five in the country. He said the state’s high school graduation rate is at an all-time high and is above the national average. And the most recent report on fourth-grade reading and math scores said Mississippi had the highest gains of any state in America.
As for business, the press release noted that the state this year has already set a record for new private sector investment, with $12 billion in economic development projects. The $10 billion, 1,000-job Amazon Web Services announcement is the main driver of this good news.
But the state’s unemployment news — more accurately, the number of people who are working — is far less impressive.
At first glance, things look good. The unemployment rate has continued to decline, and five years of statistics say there are far fewer people actively looking for a job who don’t have one.
From January through March of this year, the average number of unemployed people was 35,700. This figure has come down every year since 2020, when the covid-19 epidemic spawned a recession. In 2020, the state averaged 99,000 people a month without a job.
A fairer comparison might be 2019, the year before covid hit. That year, 70,000 people were unemployed, and the average monthly jobless rate was 5.5% — nearly twice as high as today.
Unfortunately, today’s unemployment rate and the number of unemployed people don’t tell the story. The state’s real concern is that the number of people who do have a job has been declining every year except one since 2020.
Again using pre-covid 2019 as the benchmark, Mississippi’s labor force averaged 1.278 million people that year. In 2020, the impact of covid removed 34,000 people from the labor force, but a rebound in 2021 returned 9,000 to the employment rolls.
It has been slowly downhill ever since: 5,000 fewer workers in 2022, a decline of another 17,000 in 2023, and the loss of 7,000 more people from the work force in the first three months of this year.
So far, this year’s labor force has averaged 1.224 million people. That’s down by 54,000 from pre-covid 2019, and even down 20,000 from 2020, when the pandemic was at its worst.
There could be any number of reasons for this. Covid-19 may have encouraged some people to retire. Others not yet at retirement age may still be out of the job market. Businesses hit by inflation and higher labor costs may be trying to get along with fewer employees. But fewer people with jobs, along with fewer unemployed residents, indicates working-age people have moved out of Mississippi in search of more opportunities.
The United States has rebounded from the pandemic by adding 3.2 million jobs since 2019. Over the same period, Mississippi has 54,000 fewer workers. It may take time to fix this, but the national experience shows it can be done. And that would be worthy of a press release.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
