Employment prospects vary from state to state, but nationwide, less than one percentage point separates the jobless rates across the country's four main regions, a pattern not seen since 2008 at the onset of the Great Recession, said Steven G. Cochrane, managing director of Moody's Analytics.
Bureau of Special Services, OWI. (1941-1945); Still Picture Branch (NWDNS), National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD
Likewise, the latest survey from Manpower Employment, a temp agency, shows the strongest outlook for hiring since 2008. The job front for early 2014 looks most promising in the Florida cities of Deltona and Cape Coral and the Texas cities of McAllen, Austin and Dallas, Manpower said. Employers in Buffalo, Memphis, Hartford and Chicago are not as optimistic.
What Kind of Jobs and Where?
Job Growth |
Fastest Job Growth 2014:
Bottom States for Job Growth 2014:
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Source: Moody’s Analytics |
Nationwide, among the fastest growing jobs are those in health care and construction (see slide show). The hot jobs in Florida include cement masons, construction project managers and carpenters. In Colorado, registered nurses and retail store workers are in demand.
Longer term through 2020, New York expects to need biomedical engineers and event planners. Home health aides and/or personal care aides are the top growing jobs in California, Ohio and Utah. Registered nurses and physical therapists will be needed in Idaho and South Carolina through 2020, according to state estimates.
Thanks to its ongoing energy boom, North Dakota is still creating jobs faster than any other state, with an increase again this year of 3.6 percent, about the same as last year, ahead of Arizona’s 3 percent growth rate, according to Moody’s estimates.
In raw numbers, the nation’s largest states are expected to add the most jobs in 2014. Texas, which replaced all of its recession-hit jobs by December 2011, is expected to add 308,000 new jobs in 2014. California has not yet recovered the 1.4 million jobs lost during the recession, but will edge closer as it adds nearly 264,000 new jobs this year.
But job growth is likely to be lackluster in other areas, notably the nation’s capital and Alaska. The District of Columbia’s heavy reliance on the shrinking federal government will result in paltry job growth. Alaska is losing energy jobs to fracking in North Dakota and Texas, both of which have surpassed Alaska in terms of oil production.
Elsewhere, Alabama and West Virginia are expected to be below the national average in job growth in 2014, but are trending in the right direction. Alabama has seen improvements in manufacturing, on the strength of its expanding auto plants there, including Mercedes-Benz, Honda and Toyota, while the opening of the Appalachia-to-Texas pipeline is bolstering West Virginia’s job outlook.
Uptick in Growth Nationally
Another indicator of the steadily growing strength of the U.S. job market came from the Federal Reserve’s decision in late December to reduce its stimulus for the US economy.
Some economists are forecasting job growth to gradually accelerate to 3 percent in 2014, up from the 2 percent average annual pace of the last four years.
Others are more cautious. The National Association for Business Economics and Standard & Poor’s both are forecasting payrolls to increase in the range of 195,000 to 200,000 jobs per month in 2014, and they predict an overall unemployment rate of about 7 percent, not much different than today. Stephen P. A. Brown, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, figures U.S. employment won’t reach its pre-recession peak until 2015.
The US economy might have gotten a boost from the two-year budget deal Congress approved in December that eases some of the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration. Equally important, the budget agreement might give businesses more confidence to hire and invest since it guarantees there won’t be another government budget crisis before the deal expires in 2015.
A worsening global economy, however, still poses risk to states that rely heavily on exports. If the recovery among European Union countries falters, states in the Northeast would lose momentum while a shock to the Chinese economy could put the brakes on Western states, Cochrane said.
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