While the US unemployment rate fights to stay below the daunting benchmark of double-digits, large swaths of the country have now breached that level for the first time in decades as several states have seen their jobless rates double in the last year.

May marked the first time since 1983 that an entire region of the US, the west, saw its unemployment rate hit 10 per cent and 13 states now have that distinction, labour department figures showed on Friday. Places that were hit hardest by the collapse of the housing market and automotive industry continue to bleed jobs and the effect has radiated across other states and industries.