More Records for N. Dakota's Booming Oil Economy

	State Employment, Top 10 by Annual % Increase
	State	July 2010	July 2011	% Change
1.	North Dakota	375,300	395,000	5.25%
2.	Texas	10,350,300	10,619,800	2.60%
3.	Utah	1,183,700	1,213,400	2.51%
4.	Wyoming	282,500	288,800	2.23%
5.	Oklahoma	1,531,800	1,565,800	2.22%
6.	Massachusetts	3,190,000	3,246,800	1.78%
7.	Hawaii	585,700	595,600	1.69%
8.	Oregon	1,600,000	1,625,300	1.58%
9.	Kentucky	1,770,400	1,798,300	1.58%
10.	Michigan	3,882,100	3,942,100	1.55%

The BLS released data today for July state employment and unemployment.  Thanks to its ongoing oil boom (see recent CD post "More Records for North Dakota's Booming Oil Economy), North Dakota led the country with the greatest year-over-year job growth at 5.25%, slightly more than double the 2.6% job growth in second-place Texas (see chart above).  North Dakota also leads the country with the lowest July jobless rate of 3.3%, far below the national rate of 9.1% and almost a full percentage point below second-place Nebraska at 4.1%.  Texas wasn't even close at 8.4%, ranking 27th in the country for July jobless rates.

North Dakota also led the country with a 6.9% growth in personal income for the first quarter of 2011, much higher than the 2.6% growth for the next two states: Wyoming and Texas.  In 2010, North Dakota was the state with the highest growth in real state GDP at 7.1%, far ahead of second -place New York at 5.1%, and more than twice the 2.8% rate in Texas.     

Related: See Catherine Rampell's post today at the Economix blog titled "The North Dakota Miracle," which starts with "Forget the Texas Miracle. Let's instead look at North Dakota..."