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📈States with the largest job increases over last 20 years

Workers 55 and older became an increasing share of the national workforce

Stacker.com staff

Published: March 27, 2023 at 4:06 PM

Over the past 20 years, the U.S. has weathered multiple major financial crises, natural disasters, and dramatic shifts in consumer behaviors.

Yet the vast majority of states have managed to grow enough jobs to keep the nation’s economy going.

The U.S. has added close to 21 million jobs since 2003, while the population has grown nearly twice that amount. Over that time, more than two dozen states have increased their employment by double-digit percentages.

Swyft Filings used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to rank all 50 states and Washington D.C. by the percentage change in jobs from the second quarter (Q2) 2003 to Q2 2022, breaking ties according to which state had more overall job gains. For additional context about the labor force and earnings, statistics were also gathered from BLS data on average weekly wages, unemployment, and labor force participation, and state population information from Census Bureau data.

The second quarter of 2022 marked the point at which most states had recovered all of the jobs lost during the COVID-19 pandemic—the biggest shock to the U.S. workforce and economy since the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Some states have seen high-wage jobs grow more quickly than others over the last two years, including North Carolina, Florida, and Texas, according to credit rating agency Fitch Ratings.

Over the two decades studied for this ranking, workers 55 and older became an increasing share of the national workforce, and a far larger proportion than younger workers. In fact, roughly all of the employment growth from 2000 to 2020 was driven by workers 60 years and older, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic and the bullish stock market of 2020-2021 pushed many older workers to retire or depart the workforce. According to a study from the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, the pandemic added more than one million Americans to the retired population—but retirement was often preceded by a period of unemployment, meaning that many may have chosen to retire when they weren’t able to find another job. Older Americans have also suffered the largest share of pandemic-related deaths.

A few states have seen near-stagnant job growth or an overall loss of jobs compared to 20 years ago, including West Virginia, Louisiana, and Michigan. In West Virginia, economists at West Virginia University point to an overreliance on the coal export industry and low participation rate in the workforce as forces holding back economic growth. Only 1 in 2 adults in the state are working or looking for work.

Continue reading to see how states stack up regarding job increases over the last two decades.