Federal Reserve Economic Data

The FRED® Blog

State and metro employment: First quarter 2025

On April 18, 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the first quarter data for total nonfarm employees at the state and metro levels. At the state level, Texas led all states, adding 74,100 jobs in the first quarter. California had the largest decline, losing 54,800 jobs.

The FRED map above shows the change in employment in each state during the first quarter. If you sum up the individual states, you’ll see a net gain of 301,600 jobs. This is different from the reported number for the nation, which was 456,000 as of April 29. This difference is because the state level has different sampling and tends to have a larger margin of error than the national number.

At the metro level, the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington MSA led the nation with 18,700 jobs added in the first quarter. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA had the largest decline, losing 25,200 jobs in the first quarter. These numbers tend to vary greatly from quarter to quarter, with even greater sampling errors than the errors at the state and national levels. So, take these numbers with a grain of salt.

How these maps were created: Search FRED for “total nonfarm employees in Missouri” (or any other state). Click “View Map” and then “Edit Map.” Change the units to “Change, Thousands of Persons” and the frequency to quarterly with aggregation method “End of Period.” Under “Format,” select “User Defined Method” for how to group the data: Switch the number of color groups to 3 and change the colors to red for states that shed jobs (or a value less than or equal to 0), light green for states with modest job growth (or less than 10), and dark green for states with strong growth (or a value large enough to incorporate the rest of the states). For the second map, repeat the process with an MSA—St. Louis, for example.

Suggested by Jack Fuller and Charles Gascon.

Unemployment rates by nativity and timing of immigration

Recent insights from the Research Division

FRED has data for various segments of the US labor force, including employment of native-born and foreign-born workers. Today’s post taps into unemployment data for these groups.

The FRED graph above shows US Bureau of Labor Statistics data on the fraction of the native-born labor force (solid blue line) and foreign-born labor force (dashed green line) who are out of a job and actively seeking one.

These data don’t show major differences between the groups, but recent research from Alexander Bick at the St. Louis Fed uncovered nuances in the data. He used the BLS survey that collects household labor market information to examine unemployment rates of immigrants according to how long they had resided in the US.

Between 2014 and 2024, immigrants in the US for more than 3 years often had slightly lower unemployment than native-born workers. More-recent immigrants often had higher unemployment than both those groups.

Average unemployment rates since 2022

  • Non-recent immigrants 3.3%
  • U.S. natives 3.8%
  • Recent immigrants 7.6%

Bick’s analysis also considers the potential effects of undercounting immigrants. If unemployed immigrants are undercounted to a large-enough degree, actual demand for labor may be weaker than what official data show. But he finds the impact to be small: In October 2024, an estimate of unreported recent immigrants would have increased the overall unemployment rate by 0.1 percentage points.

For more about this and other research, visit the publications page of the St. Louis Fed’s website, which offers an array of economic analysis and expertise provided by our staff.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Unemployment Rate – Native Born.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button, select the “Add Line” tab, and search for “Unemployment Rate – Foreign Born.” Don’t forget to click “Add data series.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.



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