Major Cities Continue to See Unemployment Rate Increases

According to Data from the Bureau of Labor Stats some of the nation's largest metro areas continue to see increases in their unemployment rate.

Currently, Data is only available up until December 2008--When the Nation's Unemployment rate was 7.2%---As of January, 2009 the US's unemployment rate was 7.6%---So If I had to guess, I'd say that most of these city's unemployment rates are really ~0.5% higher than what is currently shown.

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Of the 5 cities shown, Las Vegas has the highest unemployment rate in December, of 9.1% as gamblers and conventioneers continue to limit their trips to sin-city.

Los Angeles Metro Area saw an 8.8% unemployment rate and Atlanta was at 7.6%.

Chicago (7.1%) and New York (6.6%) Metro areas saw unemployment rates below the national average in the month of December.

Comparing the unemployment rates of New York City, Chicago, LA, Las Vegas, and Atlanta

So I decided to take a look at the unemployment rate by major metropolitan area for several of the US's big cities---New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Atlanta. It's important to note that since this is at the metro-level (rather than national or state level), the unemployment rates are 'lumpier' --- just as a result of statistical sampling techniques used for each geography.



But in general you can see some trends, LA and Las Vegas have seen the steepest increase in unemployment rate during the last 2 years---followed by Atlanta & Chicago. And the diverse New York City economy seems to be holding in there a little bit better than its peers.