State No. 8 among most volatile U.S. job markets

California’s often unpredictable job market ranks eighth-most-volatile among the states.

My trusty spreadsheet analyzed state-bystate employment data dating to 1990, looking at the severity of the ups and downs of job markets while focusing on a geeky volatility measure — standard deviation — applied to annual changes in unemployment rates and job counts.

California workers have had to navigate a job market filled with far-above-average gyrations in the past three decades.

Just ponder the peaks and valleys.

Job growth statewide averaged 0.9% annually since 1990 — No. 23 among the states — but has run from a high 3.7% gain in the heat of the dot-com technology craze in 1998 to a pandemic-era loss of 7.1% in 2020.

And unemployment — averaging 7.3% since 1990 and second-highest in the nation — has gone from 12.5% in the Great Recession’s rubble of 2010 to 4.1% in 2019, just before the coronavirus iced the business climate.

But workers in seven states have seen even wilder swings, according to my math. Hawaii was No. 1 for employment volatility, followed by Nevada, then Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Colorado and Rhode Island.

Those states arguably have business concentrations familiar to Californians such as big tourism industries, wellknown for high economic sensitivities (Hawaii, Nevada and Florida), risky tech sectors (Massachusetts and Colorado) and aging, industrial economies (Michigan and Rhode Island).

At the other end of the volatility spectrum, Nebraska scored the most-stable ranking. Next were South Dakota, Arkansas, Kansas, Montana and West Virginia. Let’s politely say these aren’t major economic dynamos.

And California’s economic archrival, Texas, had the 17thlowest volatility.