DC-area unemployment rate falls to 3.1%

Unemployment rates continued to move lower in most of the nation’s metropolitan areas, with the jobless rate in the D.C. metro region falling to a new pandemic low in November.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the D.C. region’s November unemployment rate was 3.1%, down from 3.3% in October, and 3.9% in November 2021.



Baltimore’s unemployment rate fell to 3.5% in November, down from 4.0% in October and 4.7% a year earlier.

Fargo, North Dakota, had the lowest metro unemployment rate in the country last month, at just 1.5%. El Centro, California, had the highest, at 16.7%.

Among cities with a population of 1 million or more, Minneapolis continued to have the lowest unemployment rate in November, at 1.9%. Las Vegas had the highest big city jobless rate, at 5.6%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics posts annual changes in metropolitan unemployment rates monthly, and changes in civilian workforce online.

Jeff Clabaugh

Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.

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