How the U.S. labor market broke and rebuilt itself, state by state — participation, openings, quits and shortages across 80 months.
← → step months · space plays · click any state for its storytap a state for its story · drag the chart to change the month
About the data
Monthly state-level labor market indicators from January 2020 through August 2026 (51 jurisdictions: 50 states + DC), rebuilt from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on September 25, 2026. Population, labor force, participation, employment and unemployment come from LAUS; job openings, hires and quits come from state JOLTS. Figures are seasonally adjusted (population is not), and counts are in thousands. August 2026 LAUS figures are preliminary. The app reads State-Grid view.csv and does not fetch live data.
Participation rate (LFPR) — share of the civilian 16+ population working or looking for work.
“vs Feb 2020” — change versus February 2020, the last full pre-pandemic month (the dataset’s own baseline). Delta series begin in March 2020.
Job openings rate — computed here as openings ÷ (employment + openings) × 100, the JOLTS definition.
Unemployed per job opening — the dataset’s “Available Worker Ratio”. Below 1.0 means more openings than unemployed people: a labor shortage.
Quit / hire rates — quits and hires as a share of employment (JOLTS).
October 2025: BLS did not publish state labor-force (LAUS) estimates for this month. The app fills population, labor force, participation, employment and unemployment by straight-line interpolation between September and November 2025 and labels the month as interpolated. October job openings, hires and quits are published BLS figures.
Job openings, hires and quits after December 2025: BLS now publishes state JOLTS estimates once a year, with the prior year's monthly figures. These maps show no data for 2026 until that release.
Static ES-module app — D3 v7 + TopoJSON from CDN, data read straight from the CSV at load. No build step.