Weekly Economic Report: January Jobs by Industry

by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff

>>Due to travel, the second part of the report on government revenue has been postpone one week.<<

Private-sector employment in Wyoming is up by 5,000 in January 2019 over the same month a year earlier. This 2.4-percent increase is the largest since 2015.

The construction industry led the state in jobs creation, both in absolute numbers (2,400) and in percent (13.8). On the downside, health care and social assistance lost the largest amount of jobs (700) while utilities took the biggest lost percentage-wise (-4.0). Figure 1 reports the changes in percent, January 2018 to January 2019:

Figure 1

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The closely watched minerals industry lost one percent of its jobs; coal mining was down 3.6 percent. In terms of share of total private employment, minerals has fallen from 13.4 percent in 2012 to 9.6 percent in January 2019.

After a rise in minerals jobs in 2017, it appears as though the industry is once again back in contraction mode. Figure 2 reports every month, annual rates, over the past two years:

Figure 2

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The problematic growth rates in private jobs still results in a small decline in our state's Government Employment Ratio. First, while private jobs have slowly increased since early 2017, employment in state and local governments have declined:

Figure 3

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

As for the GER numbers for the month of January, they have declined over the past ten years. This shows a small improvement in the private sector's role over government in providing employment in Wyoming: