DETROIT – Unemployment in the city of Detroit has reached its lowest point in 23 years, according to data from March.
After seeing significant spikes in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis, and in the first year of the COVID pandemic, Detroit’s unemployment rate has fallen below 6% for the first time since April 2000. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics places the city’s unemployment rate at 5.8% as of March.
City officials say the improvement is related to “attracting good paying jobs to Detroit,” and hope that the reported thousands more jobs currently available will help knock that unemployment rate down even further.
“The sustained drop in our unemployment rate reflects the rise in opportunities in Detroit and that Detroiters are taking advantage of them,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said. “A 5.8% unemployment rate is great progress, but our goal is to have Detroit’s unemployment rate in line with the state and national averages.”
Michigan’s average unemployment rate was 4.1% as of March, while the nation’s average rate was 3.5%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Detroit unemployment rate over time
The city’s unemployment rate has been constantly fluctuating throughout the last few decades, with significant spikes in 2009-2010, and in 2020.
Between 2000 and 2022, the year with the lowest average unemployment rate was 2000 with a rate of 6.66%. The next-lowest was 2022 with an average rate of 8.02%.
Unemployment steadily rose in the early-to-mid-2000s, plateaued, then began rising more sharply in 2007, when the Great Recession began. Detroit’s average annual unemployment rate jumped from 15.62% in 2008 to 23.9% in 2009 -- a 41.9% increase. The average annual rate rose a bit more to 24% in 2010, which is the highest unemployment rate seen in the city since 2000.
Though ever-fluctuating, the city sustained high unemployment rates each month from 2009-2011, peaking at 27% in June 2009.
Detroit’s unemployment rates slowly started dropping after 2010, and reached the low rate of 8.63% in 2019 before the pandemic hit and caused another spike.
Below is the graph of average annual Detroit unemployment rates between 2000-2022.
Detroit unemployment before, during pandemic
With so many people unable to work at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Detroit’s unemployment rate shot up in early 2020.
In March 2020, Detroit’s unemployment rate was 9.7%. That rate rose to 37.2% in April 2020 -- a 117.3% increase in one month.
Unemployment rose higher in May of that year, peaking at 39.3% before slowly dropping into the 20s and then teens by the end of the year.
The city has seen a fairly steady decline in unemployment since then, and remained below 10% for much of 2022. Detroit’s unemployment rate rose slightly in January this year, but dropped to 7.7% in February, and to 5.8% in March -- the lowest it has been in decades.
Below is a graph of Detroit’s monthly unemployment rates from January 2019 to February 2023.