As we all know, the number of job openings has soared over the past year:
But how are individual states doing? Here are the top and bottom ten:
Alaska and Wyoming are begging for workers and not getting them. Those are presumably good states to go to if you want to start fresh and find a new job. Washington and New York, by contrast, are apparently having a much easier time filling their open jobs. You'll have a good deal less leverage if you look for a job there.
It’s expensive to move to and live in Alaska. And there’s no indication that whatever jobs are open up there pay enough to justify the move. (In fact, it’s entirely possible the reason why there are so many jobs open in Alaska is *because* they don’t pay enough to justify taking them, for native-born Alaskans or people coming from other states.)
Anecdotally, most of the chain restaurant and stores around me in Northern Virginia have signs begging for workers too. But there’s no way you can live comfortably in Northern Virginia if your household makes less than at least $75k or so. Rents for one bedrooms that aren’t in crime zones start at like $24k a year. So it’s not surprising to me that these places are having trouble finding workers… or to learn that the woman making my burrito at chipotle commutes in from 3 counties away.
I notice that the top six states are all very small in population, while most of the bottom ten are large.
It's a little hard to understand a bar chart that doesn't start at zero. This seems to be blowing up the difference between 6% and 8%, in which range almost every state lies.
How Kevin feels about not adjusting for inflation is how his long-term readers feel about his use of charts that don't start at zero.
To be fair it is an all too common problem across all media. The place where it really annoys me is in financial charts where the scale can change in the space of a few minutes.
I live in MT, ranked #6. It's really easy to find a job out here right now. You're not going to find a place to live anywhere near that job, though, regardless of whether you're renting or buying.
In Missoula, a town of about 100,000, the vacancy rate last year was less than 1% and the average single bedroom rents for $1,150. Standard criteria is for an applicant to make 3x rent to be well-qualified, so someone needs to make about $20/hr just to be competitive for a one bedroom. Missoula is neither the most (Bozeman) or least competitive market in the state.
Locally our wage have gone up for MOST job classifications
That is about to change, yet again
The Triad Business News (Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point cities of NC) are expanding and will bring 1,000 NEW jobs to Wilmington NC.
This will put enormous pressure on wages to rise. This is becoming onerous for some employers......
"Alaska and Wyoming are begging for workers and not getting them. Those are presumably good states to go to if you want to start fresh and find a new job. "
On the other hand, you have to live in Alaska or Wyoming.