A visualization of unemployment insurance claims by state, adjusted for population, shows Kansas as an outlier among states.
The number of people filing for unemployment insurance each week is a useful indicator of the condition of the economy. I present this data for each state and the nation in an interactive visualization. Because states vary widely in their population (the most populous state has 68 times the population of the least populous), I’ve cast the data as claims per thousand residents of each state.
In the nearby chart drawn from the visualization, we see initial claims for Kansas are much higher than neighboring states. The trend in Kansas is rising when nearby states are steady or rising slightly. The trend for continued claims is similar.
If we look at Kansas compared to all states, we see the same: Claims in Kansas are higher than almost all states.
(When an unemployed worker files a claim for the first time, that is counted as an initial claim. Claims by workers after the initial claim are counted as continued claims.)
To learn more about this data and to access the visualization, click here.
