by Ciara Litchfield
Job participation is up by 19,000 people in the state of West Virginia and is the best figure the state has seen since January 2009. The total number of people in the workforce grew from 744,000 in October 2018 to 763,000 from October of 2019.
Dr. John Deskins, Bureau of Business and Economic Research director, said, “West Virginia will never be able to achieve a level of economic prosperity that is on par with the nation with a labor force participation rate that is a full 10 percentage points below the national average.”
While the labor participation rate has gotten better, increasing up to 54.8% from 53.9%.The state still has the lowest labor participation rate in the country at 53% below the national average which is 63.3%.
Along with growth in participation in the labor force, the state is also seeing a decrease in unemployment. In September, the state had seen an unemployment rate of 4.7 percent. This is a full percentage away from the unemployment national average of 3.6%.
In the October 2019 jobs report it shows that W.Va. had seen employment gains in manufacturing, construction, education and health services. It also showed that W.Va. had a decline in employment in the mining, logging and retail trade fields. Retail trade decline isn’t surprising as we see stores unable to compete with online websites and stores.
This workforce participation rate is determined by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and is calculated by the sum of employed and unemployed active job seekers divided by total working able population. This is used to measure the state’s active workforce.
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