The Labor Market is Healthiest In Red States, Suffering In Blue States. 9 of the top 10 performing states are led by GOP governors:

May’s jobs report showed better job growth than the previous month but still fell short of expert predictions. The economy gained just 559,000 nonfarm payroll jobs, with notable gains in sectors including leisure and hospitality, public and private education, and health care and social assistance.

Now, the U.S. unemployment rate sits at 5.8%, which is still high but is much lower than the nearly historic high of 14.7% in April 2020. This overall drop can be attributed largely to a combination of vaccinations and states loosening restrictions. It will take far more time for us to reduce the unemployment rate to pre-pandemic levels than it did for the virus to reverse over a decade of job growth, though.

In order to identify the states whose unemployment rates are bouncing back most, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on five key metrics that compare unemployment rate statistics from the latest month for which data is available (May 2021) to key dates in 2019 and 2020.

The Chart below shows what states did the best and the worst, and who that states voters chose.