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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/01/30/states-adding-the-most-jobs-since-the-great-recession/">http://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/01/30/states-adding-the-most-jobs-since-the-great-recession/</a>
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States Adding the Most Jobs Since the Great Recession
<p class="post-meta"> <span class="byline">By <a class="vcard
author url"
href="http://247wallst.com/author/samuel-stebbins/"
title="Posts by Samuel Stebbins" rel="author"
itemprop="author" itemscope=""
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span class="fn"
itemprop="name">Samuel Stebbins</span></a>, <a class="vcard
author url" href="http://247wallst.com/author/michael-sauter/"
title="Posts by Michael B. Sauter" rel="author"
itemprop="author" itemscope=""
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span class="fn"
itemprop="name">Michael B. Sauter</span></a> and <a
class="vcard author url"
href="http://247wallst.com/author/thomas-c-frohlich/"
title="Posts by Thomas C. Frohlich" rel="author"
itemprop="author" itemscope=""
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span class="fn"
itemprop="name">Thomas C. Frohlich</span></a></span> <span
class="timestamp" itemprop="datePublished"
content="2017-01-30T12:09:07+00:00">January 30, 2017 12:09 pm
EST</span> </p>
<div itemprop="articleBody" class="entry-content"><br>
The U.S. economy has changed drastically in the past decade. As
the housing bubble burst and the economy spiraled into the worst
recession the country has faced since the Great Depression,
unemployment hit a multi-decade high of 10% in 2009. Despite major
setbacks, the U.S. economy began improving in June 2009, and many
parts of the country are now thriving.
<p>There are nearly 5.9 million more jobs in the United States
today than there were at the end of 2007. Employment growth,
however, has not been even across all states. 24/7 Wall St.
reviewed 10-year job growth in all 50 states to identify the
states where employment increased the most.</p>
<p>Most states recorded some employment growth. Only in seven
states, there are fewer jobs today than there were in December
2007. In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Martin Kohli, chief
regional economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
explained that the construction and manufacturing sectors have
been the biggest drags on employment growth. Indeed, of the
states that lost jobs in the last 10 years, manufacturing was
the biggest drag in three — Connecticut, Maine, and West
Virginia — while construction shed the most jobs in the
remaining four: Alabama, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Wyoming.</p>
<p><span style="color:#008000;"><strong><a
href="http://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/01/30/states-adding-the-most-jobs-since-the-great-recession/2/"
style="color:#008000;">Click here to see the states adding
the most jobs since the Great Recession.</a></strong></span></p>
<p>Today, there are 1.4 million fewer construction jobs in the
United States than there were a decade ago, the largest
employment decline of any industry. “We really have not had a
solid recovery in the construction industry from the burst in
the housing bubble,” Kohli said. New home construction bottomed
out in 2009 at 553,900 new projects and has yet to return to the
decade-long peak of 1.4 million housing units started in 2007.
Construction was the biggest drag on employment growth in 28
states, hitting Arizona, California, Nevada, and Florida
especially hard.</p>
<p>On the other hand, total employment has increased in the vast
majority of states over the last 10 years. Employment growth
ranged from 0.1% in New Jersey to 20.7% in North Dakota. Texas,
the state with the second highest proportional employment
growth, at 15.3%, had the largest increase in total employment,
at more than 1.6 million workers.</p>
<p>Employment growth in the U.S. was driven primarily by the
education, health care and social services sector. Nationwide,
the sector netted an addition of some 4.4 million new workers.
“The aging of the population is one of the things that’s been
driving job growth in health care,” Kohli explained. Driven
primarily by the health care industry, the sector was the
biggest contributor to employment growth in all but three
states, often accounting for over 100,000 new jobs.</p>
<p>In some states, such as North Dakota and Texas, employment
growth was also largely attributable to gas fracking and oil
exploration.</p>
<p>The degree to which the number of jobs increased by state
depended largely on the skill level of the state’s labor force
and its industrial composition. It appears as though newer jobs
tend to require a higher education. The share of adults with a
bachelor’s degree increased by the same amount or more as the
national increase in eight of the 10 states with the largest
proportional rise in employment over the decade. In regards to
overall job growth among states, Kohli added, it seems that
“having an educated labor force was definitely a positive
thing.”</p>
<p>To identify the states with the most and least job growth, 24/7
Wall St. reviewed employment changes in each state from December
2007 through December 2016. State totals, as well as the
relative increase in each state’s employment came from Bureau of
Labor Statistics’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics database.
Educational attainment, median household income, and industry
composition are as of 2015, unless otherwise specified, and are
the most recent figures available from the U.S. Census Bureau’s
American Community Survey. All references to proportional or
nominal changes in jobs or workers in this piece refer to total
employment change.</p>
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<div class="wp-caption aligncenter"
src="https://247wallst.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/idaho-tobacco.jpg"
alt="City of Bosie Idaho with modern buildings"
width="645" height="363"
data-credit="Thinkstock" data-id="337896"
data-caption" style="width: 655px"><img class="aligncenter
replaced" src="cid:part5.8748DD95.72D42B74@frontier.com"
alt="City of Bosie Idaho with modern buildings"
data-credit="Thinkstock" data-id="337896" data-caption=""
height="363" width="645"></div>
<p><strong>11. Idaho</strong><br>
<strong>> 10-yr. employment change:</strong> +6.7%<br>
<strong>> Employment change:</strong> 44,200<br>
<strong>> Dec. unemployment:</strong> 3.7%<br>
<strong>> Total employment:</strong> 700,700</p>
<p>Idaho has one of the healthiest economies of any state. In the
last 10 years, employment has increased by 6.7%, more rapidly
than in the vast majority of states. The increasing number of
jobs in the state were not enough to lower unemployment,
however. Some 3.7% of Idaho’s labor force is out of a job, up
from 3.2% in December 2007. Still, unemployment in the state
falls below the national unemployment rate by a full percentage
point.</p>
<p>While employment has increased rapidly in Idaho, incomes have
not. The typical Idaho household earns $48,275 a year, only
about $2,000 more than the median household income a decade ago.
Median income across the United States increased by about $5,000
over the same period.</p>
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<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/01/30/states-adding-the-most-jobs-since-the-great-recession/">http://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/01/30/states-adding-the-most-jobs-since-the-great-recession/</a>
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<p>Ken</p>
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