States' Unemployment Rates at Highest Levels in Years

SACRAMENTO, Jan. 23 -- California's unemployment rate jumped to 9.3 percent in December, capping a tumultuous year of massive job losses and a housing slump that has struck most of the country.

Several other states reported unemployment rates Friday that have reached levels not seen in years or decades. Michigan, struggling with heavy job losses related to the auto industry, led the nation with a 10.6 percent unemployment rate in December. Rhode Island said its rate reached 10 percent, the worst in three decades and nearly double the rate from a year ago.

In North Carolina, the unemployment rate hit 8.7 percent in December, the highest level since the recession of the early 1980s, when the rate reached 9 percent. And the story was similar in Ohio, where steep losses in the manufacturing sector pushed the unemployment rate to 7.8 percent last month, the highest jobless rate in more than 20 years.

Missouri's unemployment rate hit its highest mark in 25 years, increasing by more than half a point to 7.3 percent in December.

New York's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate reached its highest level since 1994 last month, rising to 7 percent, up from 4.9 percent in December 2007.

Excluding farm workers, California lost 78,200 jobs in December as employers sliced payrolls to deal with the slowing economy.

California's unemployment rate hasn't been at this level since January 1994, when the state was coming out of its recession in the early part of that decade, said Stephen Levy, senior economist for the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

"California, like the nation, is in the midst of a terrible and deepening recession," Levy said. "We all expect the job losses to continue and unemployment rates to go higher."

The national unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent in December.