State taxes and unemployment rates

by Bob Weeks on March 12, 2010

A few days ago someone left a comment to a post in this blog that argued — I think so, anyway — that low-tax states are not doing well in this economy, with the measure of “wellness” being the state’s unemployment rate. The author provided a link to an article titled Do taxes kill jobs?. That article contained a table of the states with columns for taxes paid per person and the state’s unemployment rate.

The author of the comment made this claim: “How are states with lower taxes doing in this economy? Not very well.”

Here’s a plot of the taxes paid per person and unemployment rate of a states. I didn’t include Alaska, as it is an extreme outlier value because of special circumstances in that state.

Is there a trend visible? If there is, it’s not pronounced.

State taxes and unemployment rates

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