Every region and every county is living in a slightly different labor market. And some Bureau of Labor Statistics data out Wednesday gave us a closer look at where some of the most dramatic shifts in the labor market have been happening on a local level.
On our road trip of the counties with the most annual job growth and losses, our first stop is scenic Monterey County, California, with a whopping 4.8% annual employment growth. Richard Vaughn, the county’s economic development manager, said the growth was driven by agriculture.
“We have strawberries, leaf lettuce, head lettuce, broccoli,” Vaughn said.
Kevin Dayton, a government affairs consultant with the nearby Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce, said that growth likely reflects a rebound from the previous year, when floods hit the area.
“And it did a lot of damage to the early crops, in particular strawberries,” Dayton said.
Our next stop is the Windy City. Cook County performed the worst among the 10 largest U.S. counties.
“I kind of think of Chicago as, like, the headquarters for the Midwest economy,” said Thomas Walstrum, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The Midwest is the country’s manufacturing hub, he said, which has had slow growth for decades. “And we’re continuing to see slow growth coming out of the pandemic.”
And a decline within a particular segment — RV manufacturing — is likely why Elkhart County, Indiana, a couple hours down the road, had the largest decline in employment.
“Demand for RVs went crazy coming out of the pandemic, and it’s kind of come back down to earth,” Walstrum said.
And in sunny northeast Florida, St. John’s County tied for the most employment growth year on year, according to Scott Maynard, vice president of economic development with the county’s chamber of commerce.
“We’ve seen job gains in the area of education and health care,” Maynard said. “Health care has seen a tremendous amount of growth.”
With additional health facilities under construction, he expects that sector to continue to grow as more people move to the area.
