What a difference a year makes.

In April 2020, unemployment rates soared to record highs across the state, as well as the rest of the country, as the coronavirus pandemic raged full force. Multiple businesses, particularly restaurants and personal service providers, were shuttered for extended periods, some of them never reopening. Thousands of Oklahomans found themselves relying on unemployment and other benefits instead of a regular paycheck to make ends meet.

On Wednesday, the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission (OESC) released the April 2021 unemployment report, which painted a much brighter picture than what was reported one year ago.

According to the OESC, Seminole County posted a jobless rate of 5.3 percent in April, a significant drop from April 2020 when the rate was a staggering 13.1 percent. The report shows Seminole County had an available work force of 9,211 in April, but only 8,750 of those available were counted as employed.

The story was much the same for the counties surrounding Seminole County. In Hughes County, the rate fell from 11.9 percent in April 2020 to 5.8 percent, Lincoln County’s rate tumbled from 11.1 percent to 3.7 percent and in Pottawatomie County, the rate decreased from 12.2 percent to 4.1 percent.

Latimer County posted Oklahoma’s highest unemployment rate of 8.7 percent in April, while Le Flore and McIntosh Counties shared the second-highest rate for the month, followed by Atoka County. Beaver and Texas Counties shared the lowest county unemployment rate of 1.5 percent in April. Unemployment rates in April were lower than a year earlier in all of Oklahoma’s 77 counties.

Hawaii had the nation’s highest unemployment rate in April, posting a rate of 8.5 percent, followed by California (8.3 percent), and New Mexico and New York, (8.2 percent each). Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Utah had the lowest rates (2.8 percent each).

The largest unemployment rate decrease from April 2020 to April 2021 occurred in Nevada (−21.5 percentage points). The next largest over-the-year jobless rate decrease was in Michigan (−18.7 percentage points), with another 10 states experiencing declines of 10.0 points or more.