Special Report

These Cities Added the Most Jobs in the Last Five Years

As the decade winds down, the U.S. economy continues to mark unprecedented job growth. November was the 110th straight month of reported job growth — the longest in U.S. history. In the last five years alone, the number of employed people in the United States increased by 11 million, or 7.5%. 

At the national level, this growth was driven largely by the additions of food service and retail sales jobs, as well as low paying jobs in the education, health services, and professional and business sectors. These are America’s 25 thriving industries.

The vast majority of the nation’s metropolitan areas reported employment growth over the five years through 2019. All but 42 of the nation’s 383 metropolitan areas reported increases in total employment over this period. In a number of metro areas, job growth was much greater than that of the nation, with a number of places reporting more than double, and in some cases more than triple, the national 7.5% employment growth over the 5-year period.

24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 25 metropolitan areas with the largest percentage increase in total employment from October 2014 to October 2019 using seasonally adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics program.

While only one measure of an economy, employment growth is closely tied to favorable outcomes in an area’s population. The majority of the metropolitan areas on this list have unemployment rates, household incomes, college attainment rates, poverty rates, and population growth that are better than the corresponding national figures. Every city on this list reported a population growth at least double the U.S. growth of 3.5% over the last five years. Here are the fastest growing places in every state.

Click here to see the cities that added the most jobs
Click here to see the cities that lost the most jobs
Click here to read our methodology

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