Maryland's unemployment rate spiked to a 15-year high in December as the economy continued to falter, causing the state to lose jobs during a 12-month period for the first time since 2003.
The jobless rate jumped to 5.8 percent last month, according to preliminary statistics released yesterday by the U.S. Labor Department. Maryland ended the year with 15,000 fewer jobs than in December 2007, the largest year-over-year loss since September 1992 and the first in five years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Maryland had managed to add jobs each month for most of the year, until September, when credit and financial markets collapsed and employers began trimming staffs with more urgency. The state's jobless rate has been rising steadily since May after remaining below 4 percent for more than two years.
Unemployment in Maryland last reached 5.8 percent in October 1993, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the bureau reported. Maryland lost 9,800 jobs last month, compared with November's employment rolls. About 2.6 million people were employed in Maryland last month.
Employers slashed jobs in construction, manufacturing, professional services, financial services, leisure and hospitality. The jobless rate increased from 5.3 percent in November and from 3.6 percent this time last year.
Maryland's employment picture reflects national economic turmoil that began in the manufacturing and housing industries and moved into finance, quickly spreading across the nation and seeping into just about every segment of the economy.
"It's a full-fledged, general economic slowdown, and it's hitting across all sectors," said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, an economic consulting firm in Holland, Pa. "That's what makes it so difficult to deal with at this point."
Every state and the District of Columbia saw unemployment jump, compared with the month and the year earlier, the government reported. The nation's unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent last month. The hardest-hit states were Michigan, with 10.6 percent unemployment; Rhode Island, 10 percent; and South Carolina, 9.5 percent. Forty-nine states lost jobs in December.
"It shows that this job slowdown is really all over the country, not just in the manufacturing centers and not just in the areas overbuilt with houses," said Charles W. McMillion, president and chief economist of Washington-based MBG Information Services.
