North Dakota Has Added 22,000 Jobs In The Last Year, Nearly 70,000 Workers In The Last Decade

The latest North Dakota jobs report is out, and there isn’t a lot of news. Once again, the state’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate is under 3 percent (2.7 percent in June 2014 versus 2.9 percent in June 2013). Once again, North Dakota has added a lot of jobs.

“Employers reported an estimated 22,000 more jobs when compared to a year ago, a 4.9 percent gain,” the report reads.

Mind-blowing jobs reports aren’t a new thing in North Dakota, but we shouldn’t take them for granted. Here’s some perspective on where the state has been, and where we are now, in terms of labor force (the total number of people available to work) and employed (the total number of people with a job).

The gap between the two lines would be the unemployed.

From a declining labor force in the mid-2000’s to a booming labor force just over a decade later. It’s pretty amazing.

In 2004 the state had just over 339,000 people with jobs. As of June of 2014, the state’s employment is 408,887. That’s an increase of nearly 70,000 workers, or a more than 20 percent increase.

That’s a lot of change in a relatively short amount of time.

For perspective, consider that the state’s US Census population has increased about 12 percent through the end of 2013. Which tells us that employment has grown extremely fast, and that the US Census population numbers aren’t really telling us the whole story about the number of people in the state.