Jobs Creation by State
Annual job creation numbers show that the growth in the number of jobs gained in the United States has fluctuated since 2011. In 2021, the most recent year analyzed, 12.45 million jobs were added to the economy—a seven-year low.
What do the figures look like on a state level? Here are some job creation statistics by state.
Jobs creation by state: top 10
The latest report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that California tops the chart ranking job creation by state in Q2 2022. That quarter, 1.02 million jobs were created, and California was the only state to exceed the one million mark.
California’s spot on this list of states ranked by job creation should come as no surprise. It’s the state with the highest number of small businesses and also ranks among the best states to start a business.
Texas is in second place, creating 728,431 jobs in Q2 2022. This is followed by Florida, with 610,483. New York and Illinois round out the top five, with 555,282 and 300,049 jobs created, respectively.
Here are numbers six to 10 on the list sorting job creation by state:
- Pennsylvania: 282,938
- Ohio: 265,564
- Georgia: 265,027
- North Carolina: 253,196
- New Jersey: 233,195
Incidentally, nine of these top 10 states are among the 10 most populous states in the US.
States ranked by job creation: bottom 10
This list of job creation by state shows that the bottom 10 is led by West Virginia. In Q2 2022, the Mountain State added 34,221 jobs—just 3.3% of the number of jobs gained in California.
Montana ranks next, with 33,900. The remaining states created fewer than 30,000 jobs each in Q2 2022. Rhode Island, the smallest US state in terms of size, gained 29,293 new jobs, while Hawaii and Delaware gained 29,078 and 24,768 jobs, respectively.
Alaska follows, with 24,504 jobs added, just a fraction more than South Dakota, which ranks next, with 24,337. North Dakota follows, adding 22,853 new jobs. Vermont and Wyoming are the states with the lowest number of job gains in Q2 2022. Both added fewer than 20,000 new jobs that quarter.
Together, the number of jobs added by these bottom 10 states in Q2 2022 total 258,647, around one-quarter of what California created.