MERIDIAN, Miss. (AP) — Call them the unrecovered — a handful of states where job markets, nine years later, are still struggling back to where they were before the recession.

That's true in Mississippi, where job numbers and the overall size of the economy remain below 2008 levels. It's also true in states including Alabama, Michigan, New Mexico, and West Virginia, which remain below pre-recession job levels by multiple measures. That contrasts with states including Colorado, where employment numbers have sprinted ahead. Nationwide, job numbers surpassed pre-recession peaks in 2014.

Growth has long lagged in Mississippi, and jobless rates are high even in good times. Mississippi has the second-lowest share of adults in the labor force of any state, an economy dependent on government employment, and fewer college-educated adults than the national average.