Kentucky had the biggest increase in the number of unemployment claims filed the first week of June of any state in the nation, new data show.
The Bluegrass State’s claim number leapt 208.93% from the week before, and were up 249.32% from the same week in 2024, a new study by financial services provider WalletHub found.
“There are currently 7.2 million Americans unemployed in total, and it’s important to look at some key stats for the latest week to get the complete picture,” the study says.
Kentucky was followed by North Dakota, Tennessee, Minnesota and Kansas as the top five states that saw the filing of unemployment claims climb week-over-week.
The bottom five states with the least change since the same period last week were Rhode Island, Vermont, Iowa, Michigan and Nebraska.
WalletHub will release newer numbers at the beginning of July.
Methodology: In order to identify where unemployment claims are increasing the most, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on changes in unemployment insurance initial claims for several key weeks. We also considered the number of claims per 100,000 people in the labor force. The metrics are listed below with their corresponding weights. We then used those metrics to rank-order the states.
