5,000 New Arizona Jobs for October, New Record High

Last month the state of Arizona created an additional 5,000 jobs for a new record level. Today there are 2,737,500 jobs in the state of Arizona. The unemployment rate in Arizona increased from 3.3% to 3.5% and here in the metro Phoenix area it increased from 2.8% to 3%. Given the increase in jobs and increase in unemployment rate, this would indicate growth in the population of employable persons. Year over year the state has created 40,000 net new jobs. This is down from previous years where job growth was around 100,000 jobs. We need to look at one sector for most of this issue, that is construction. Over the past year, construction lost 19,000 jobs. Normally there was gains of approximately 15,000 jobs per year. Combined that accounts for 34,000 less jobs or 50% of the decline in job growth. The good news is the real estate market is picking up and hopefully we will see a decline in the construction job losses in the coming months. The really good news is that the rest of our economy continues to create jobs!

You can read the full jobs report for Arizona at the following link:
http://www.workforce.az.gov/?PAGEID=67&SUBID=151