Somewhat insulated from the harshest effects of the loan and building industry -- and supported by an abundance of energy and agriculture -- five contiguous states have the lowest unemployment rates in the United States.

Although recent declines in commodity prices are being felt across Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, making the plans for natural gas and biofuel production to be scaled back. However, each of these states boasted unemployment rates of 3.7 percent or lower in November, when the national rate stood at 6.7 percent.

Removed from major metropolitan centers, the states with the lowest unemployment rates have kept "insulated, but not isolated" from the harshest effects of the recession by largely avoiding the turbulent housing boom and bust that plagued the nation's coasts, said Ernie Goss, an economics professor at Creighton University in Nebraska.

These states also avoided the major job losses that struck the financial services industry, local economists said, in part because rural bankers tended to be more cautious in their lending and exposure to risky mortgage derivatives that ended up badly for some of Wall Street's largest investment banks.

While this region has never been a significant manufacturing hub because of its distance from the coasts, some niche industry jobs in wind turbines and agriculture equipment have been lost as part of larger nationwide corporate cutbacks.

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