It's hardly a surprise considering Arizona officials have been talking it up for months, but the official numbers are finally in — the Grand Canyon State has recovered all of the jobs lost during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Arizona is only the third state in the nation to reach full employment recovery, according to an announcement from the Arizona Commerce Authority. The U.S. has recovered 83% of jobs lost since early last year.
According to a report from the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity, the state added 27,300 jobs in November, which drops the unemployment rate from 5.2% to 4.7% and ties a 10-year low reached in 2019. The last time Arizona’s unemployment rate dipped below 4.7% was March 2008, according to the state office.
Gov. Doug Ducey previously said at a workforce development discussion hosted by the National Governors Association in September that 101% of private-sector jobs in Arizonahave been recovered since April 2020.
“We have more jobs available than we have people to fill them,” Ducey said at the Sept. 29 event.
Arizona now has 2,998,000 nonfarm jobs, up from 2,993,100 in February 2020, according to the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity. Most of the new jobs created in November — 16,100 — were in trade, transportation and utilities.
