Oklahoma Employment Security Commission

Labor Market Statistics - The Recession

The National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee announced the official beginning of another recession starting in December of 2007. In light of this we thought it might be a good time to look back at how our unemployment rates have performed relative to the nation during other contractions.

For each of the last four recessions we looked at the period beginning twelve months before the official peak month and ended twelve months after the official trough month as decided by the NBER.

We also have included graphs showing how the state’s unemployment rate has compared to the national rate over the entire time frame of the current series (1976-2007). In addition there is a graph comparing the spread between the state and national rates during the past four recessions.

We hope that this information will prove enlightening as we face these challenging times.

Sincerely,

Lynn D. Gray
Director & Chief Economist
Economic Research & Analysis Oklahoma Employment Security Commission

Unemployment Rates 1976-2007

Unemployment Rates Jan 1980 to July 1980

Unemployment rates july 1981 to november 1982

UE rates July-1990 to March-1991

UE rates March 01 to November 01

Spread Between US and OK UE rates during recession