A worker at a construction site in Los Angeles, California, Jan. 29, 2016. (REUTERS)
U.S. businesses added more jobs in the past two years than at any other time since the 1990s, according to The White House.
The unemployment rate currently stands at 4.9 percent, down from 10 percent in 2009. Over the past six years, American businesses created 14 million new jobs. More than 2.4 million of these jobs were added between 2014 and 2015.
People use computers at a job fair in Detroit, Michigan, March 1, 2014. (REUTERS)
Most of this job creation is occurring on the East and West Coasts.
The most jobs — 464,200 — were created in California, while New York city boasts the highest increase in jobs (156,400) for a metropolitan area. The Los Angeles metro area was second with 135,100 jobs and the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas was third with 98,900 jobs.
North Dakota was the state that lost the most jobs — 19,000 — from 2014 to 2015, while the metropolitan areas that experienced some of the steepest declines included Lafayette, Louisiana (-5,500), Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, Illinois (-4,500), Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana (-3,000) and Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, Pennsylvania (-2,800).
Three metropolitan areas in the state of Louisiana were in the top 5 when it comes to largest job declines.
Nationwide, unemployment rates dropped in 47 states and the District of Columbia in 2015, while increasing in two states, and remaining unchanged in one state, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which also showed job growth in 280 of the 386 metropolitan areas.
The White House refers to this growth as evidence that “the United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.”
But critics point out that, while employers are hiring, many of the jobs are in the retail and service sectors. Those jobs are not as secure as many manufacturing and white collar jobs, nor do they pay as much. In fact, while the latest U.S. unemployment report said the economy added 242,000 jobs, average hourly wages declined.
This map uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to show the number of new jobs by metropolitan area. (Graphic by HowMuch.net)
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Do you have a map that shows job growth in relation to the population of a region?
Like 20 million people in Florida and 1200 new jobs yeyyy…. oh we still have to cover 2,875,925 people to beat unemployment
you must be a Trump reporter, you cant read or add
McJobs
WOW!! How do you respond to such a load of manure? I live in one of those high job growth areas mentioned here. I can tell you for a fact. It ain’t happening.
I live in one of the general areas cited as growth as well. I am Unemployed and I am glad to know these figures are not based in Reality.
I would love to know the source of these, which specific companies are hiring now, and in which fields.
this information resembles the monthly job’s report given by the Obama administration, no real facts, or a break down of the types of jobs, extremely vague and it’s meant to hype up the economy…Remember people this is an election year, and I am sure there is an agenda here…
It sure is here! Maybe you’re doin’ it wrong?
Forget it Scott64. No one is buying the liberal dribble. Obama has been a complete disaster. The unemployment numbers are manipulated. You don’t get 4.9% unemployment with 47 million on food stamps, 110 million getting some kind of government assistance. You never hear of box retail stores or fast food joints going under due to poor sales. You have major shipping and trucking firms about to go under because there are not enough orders to move. Nor do you have 30+% college grads moving back home because they can’t find jobs. Which blows that not enough qualified applicants garbage right out of the water. ACA is a disaster too. It cost more. People who did have insurance had to drop it because of price. Many like myself would rather pay the fine rather pay 6 grand a year plus 2500 out of pocket first before the insurance kicks in. It’s the same as not having insurance with the privilege of paying for it. And many of the health care co-ops are going broke because they don’t have enough applicants signing up. Any government that fears my bible or my gun is one I don’t need.
I live in DFW, and trust me its happening here. I work in Engineering – it took us over 6 months to hire 3 people.Took for ever to find 3 candidates with the correct qualification. Education is the Key.
Just because you don’t posses the skills necessary to get one of these job, doesn’t mean there aren’t jobs avaiable. Today’s economy has weeded out the bottom of the barrel workers.
Yes, unemployment is down…because many of the chronically unemployed have simply given up looking for work. That ALWAYS makes unemployment figures go down.
They’ve given up looking for work in the red states because they have no marketable skills and are too poor to spend money at local businesses, because the 1% has most of the money–and no business is going to “create good paying jobs” when they have no customers and no workforce with the necessary skills. (Hint: bible study and gun ownership are rarely job-marketable skills…)
What does item ownership, hobbies or spare time get togethers have to do with anything?
Wonder how that works? Given up looking? I guess their cost of living gave up too!!!!!!!!!! Who thinks this stuff up?
Looks like the white house knows how to manipulate maps too, with all the layoffs, and them saying the job growth is good. SMH
Looks like having a brain and an education and decent health care and decent government services and infrastructure is more valuable in the medium to long term than bible study and owning guns and living where the economy is designed for only 1% of the population to be prosperous….
I would like to see the average wage of these jobs? Any data on that?
Here’s some data: I live in the bluest of the blue areas on this map, and my salary went up over 20% since the bottom of the Bush Disaster, which is nice because I was out of work twice, despite a good IT credential, during the Bush jobless-economy-for-the-1%.
Low tax areas, low jobs. High tax areas, high jobs.
Kansas is going bankrupt and closing schools and hospitals and police stations after their Republican governor cut taxes for the rich. Same in Louisiana under Republican Jindal. Same in Wisconsin. Same in some other red states. Republicans are trying to blow up the popular health care program in Kentucky this week too. Meanwhile, California and other blue states are running surpluses and creating jobs.
Any questions?
No questions here. I love it!
Most of these new jobs created are low wage part time jobs. I don’t call that a real recovery. Most of the wages for these part time jobs don’t provide enough money to buy a home. Many Americans are working two or three part time jobs. It’s not a big surprise that so many people are attending political rallies for the democrat and republican parties. They have the time, because there jobs are not full time. This is a paint a pretty picture recovery by Washington D.C. and the corporate media. Real wages dropped to the lowest level in the history of record keeping. Don’t have to trust me. Trust Peter Schiff. I do.
With respect to clark county nevada this map is completely misleading. People keep flocking to vegas as if there are jobs here for everyone. Completely untrue. Most jobs are in the service industry which pay very little and typically go a particular class of people. Most construction jobs are for laborers which are typically hired as contract workers to avoid taxes and citizenship verification. The main industry is hotel and gaming but most jobs on the strip only go to people who know someone who already works for the resort. Sure, vegas has zappos a company with only about a 1k employees. They stay in the news all the time and the billionaire hseih has singlehandedly twisted the city council to his whims but the company is pretty small and doesn’t have much of an economic impact or attraction to other companies.
There is no Upper Peninsula of Michigan located on your map……
What??? You mean most of the jobs are getting created in the high-tax, high-education, knowledge-economy, high-labor-union, liberal BLUE states? And not the low money, low tax, low health, low education, designed for SQUALOR red states?
WHODATHUNK???
Gee, sounds like the loser states should learn about the value-multiplier of education, the value of good government services and good infrastructure spending, and the concept of the Velocity Of Money.
not much happening in WI, either
ya right most new jobs are Minimum wage such as McD or Goodwill, and going to Immigrants
Depends on how one defines a “job”; if you’re talking about a decent wage/salary job; you better know someone in the inside even with a college or tech school degree since a lot of those positions are “hired under the table”
Can we get a map that doesn’t discriminate against people with red-green color blindness!!!!
Not much activity, but what there is is predominately in the red states. Go figure.
Yeah,Rightttttt….America,land of a zillion used car salesmen,and a bumper crop of service industry jobs.
Only trouble is gee whiz, it’s paying jus’ mineemum wage… People Cannot live today on those terribly
low paying jobs,and there are yet higher numbers of families and individuals, getting slowly pushed off the
precipice into dire economic straits.The whores in DC will not deal with the realities of the Big Adjustment,
as it appears they are watching out for their own agendas.This once used to be a much better country.
“But critics point out that, while employers are hiring, many of the jobs are in the retail and service sectors. Those jobs are not as secure as many manufacturing and white collar jobs, nor do they pay as much. In fact, while the latest U.S. unemployment report said the economy added 242,000 jobs, average hourly wages declined.”
And Jeb Bush, and the rest of the Republican Establishment along with Hillary Clinton do not understand why Donald Trump is doing well and why Bernie Sanders upset Hillary in Michigan.
Even President Obama made several comments recently about Donald Trump that demonstrated his lack of awareness of what drives Trump’s candidacy.
If Donald Trump’s candidacy demonstrates anything and that is how much the corporate media, the Republican and Democratic Party establishment, and the political and economic elite are so out of touch with the American People that you would think they are either living in another country or on the far side of the Moon!!
The Republican Party has buried itself with a conservative ideology more suited for the 19th Century and the Democratic Party has wrapped itself in Political Correctness that both entities are no longer relevant to the Average American who as the VOA report clearly shows are not able to sustain themselves and their families in an era of low paying retail and service jobs.
Wellll…since your map put Riverside, California smack dab in the middle of San Bernardino county (a hint – it ain’t) I’d question your article’s validity just a tad.
I am cracking up at all these funny comments where people actually think the map is not true – put out by some communist government party apparently that lies about job growth. I’m a recruiter in one of those blue states that has very high job creation right now. Recruiters always know the pulse of the local economy and around the country too. In 2011 I struggled to get a job and had to take a slight pay cut from my previous position when I did get hired. Now I make more than double my income from that time because of the demand for recruiters and I have new recruiters calling me almost daily about new opportunities. I’m not trying to brag here this is not a glamorous job. But to sit here and read people claiming the job growth is bogus is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. If you live in an area with a green spike on the map – then there is job growth! I don’t know how long it will keep up, but it’s here now.
Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey
Original Data Value
Series Id: LNS11300000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Labor Force Participation Rate
Labor force status: Civilian labor force participation rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Years: 2006 to 2016
Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2006 66.0 66.1 66.2 66.1 66.1 66.2 66.1 66.2 66.1 66.2 66.3 66.4
2007 66.4 66.3 66.2 65.9 66.0 66.0 66.0 65.8 66.0 65.8 66.0 66.0
2008 66.2 66.0 66.1 65.9 66.1 66.1 66.1 66.1 66.0 66.0 65.9 65.8
2009 65.7 65.8 65.6 65.7 65.7 65.7 65.5 65.4 65.1 65.0 65.0 64.6
2010 64.8 64.9 64.9 65.2 64.9 64.6 64.6 64.7 64.6 64.4 64.6 64.3
2011 64.2 64.1 64.2 64.2 64.1 64.0 64.0 64.1 64.2 64.1 64.1 64.0
2012 63.7 63.8 63.8 63.7 63.7 63.8 63.7 63.5 63.7 63.8 63.6 63.7
2013 63.6 63.4 63.3 63.4 63.4 63.4 63.3 63.2 63.3 62.8 63.0 62.9
2014 62.9 63.0 63.2 62.8 62.8 62.8 62.9 62.9 62.8 62.9 62.9 62.7
2015 62.9 62.8 62.7 62.7 62.8 62.6 62.6 62.6 62.4 62.5 62.5 62.6
Where is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on that map. If you’re chopping states from the US, might I suggest California.
That’s what gets me about job “growth” as taunted by politicians. Yes. There has been a large increase in jobs. But they have been slave jobs. McDonald’s and such. Low paying jobs that don’t keep up with the cost of living. When wages go up, so does cost of living. One way or another. They try to break it down in gas, food, rent, etc. But leave out many other misc expenses that have burdened America for so long. Meanwhile, the politicians who try to dictate morality and progress are hourding millions of dollars and living luxurious lifestyles. Its hypocritical for a rich man to tell poor people things are gonna get better. Because a rich man lied and cheated his way to the top. Using the poor man to get there. America is the true shithole country.