PHOENIX — Last week the Labor Department released their annual preliminary benchmark for the nation’s job figures. It reduced the number of jobs added between March 2023 and March 2024 by over eight hundred thousand.
Arizona adjusted in the opposite direction with jobs data being adjusted up by nearly forty thousand.
The revision data, which relies on unemployment insurance to firm up survey data done every month, shows that not only is Arizona among the states to have job numbers revised up, but the state leads the pack. Tennessee, another fast-growing state, also had the number of new jobs added adjusted up by nearly forty thousand.
The job revisions are an annually scheduled occurrence and in every year since 2017, Arizona jobs have been revised up during the process. However, the revisions are larger now than in years past. From 2017 to 2020 job revisions were at or near ten thousand each year. In 2022 they peaked at an adjustment of almost fifty thousand.
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Revisions are also done at the metro level. Phoenix ranks second behind Los Angeles in the total number of jobs revised up.
Along with the preliminary jobs revision, the Labor Department also released its quarterly survey of employment and wages by county.
This data tracks the changes in the job market by various industry sectors and found Maricopa County standing out among the top ten largest counties in the US for job growth. With a 2.6% growth rate between the first quarter of 2023 and 2024, Maricopa beat out Miami-Dade for the county with the largest rate of job growth. The five counties with the most job growth are all located in the nation’s sunbelt region.
Not all sectors experienced job growth. In Maricopa County, jobs in the information sector have been hit particularly hard this past year with an annual decline of 7.4%. The financial sector was the only other industry to lose jobs. The biggest quarter-to-quarter job growth by industry came in the construction sector.
