The Covid-19 pandemic cost the United States over 22 million jobs. The U.S. is 8 million jobs short of where we were in February 2020. Even so, Arizona job growth is increasing. It won’t be slowing down any time soon, as the state economy recovers faster than the rest of the country.
Amid the country’s disappointing numbers is the job projection from the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) that looks at employment in Arizona from 2019-2029.
The OEO projection has jobs increasing to over 3.6 million in 2029, up from 3.1 million in 2019. This is a 1.6% annual increase.
The previous decade, from 2009-2019, Arizona saw a 1.9% annual job increase.
As a comparison, the U.S. expects to see a 0.4% annual job growth from 2019-2029.
Arizona can, in part, thank the growth and expansion of the tech industry here for the projected job growth.
During the pandemic, the tech sector here continued its rapid growth, ranking eighth in the country for tech jobs gained in the last year, according to Cyberstates 2021 report from CompTIA. Arizona added about 2,500 jobs in 2020, while many states had a net loss of tech jobs last year.
In the same report, Arizona ranked fifth in projected tech job growth from 2020-2030. CompTIA projected that Arizona will add 6,900 tech jobs in 2021.
This is evidenced by the companies moving and expanding in the Valley and throughout the state. In our April tech news recap, we highlighted multiple companies expanding and hiring here, like Ruby, RevolutionParts and LiveRamp.
The tech sector in Arizona seems to be unaffected, and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. However, the U.S. economy is struggling to restart.
In April, the U.S. picked up only 266,000 jobs. This was well below the expectations of economists, including some who had robust expectations of gaining over a million jobs in April, according to the Washington Post. The unemployment rate in April was also relatively unchanged, sitting at 6.1%.
The slight job growth last month put the U.S. at 144.3 million jobs, which is 8 million short of where the U.S. sat in February 2020. If the small growth the country saw in April continues, the U.S. won’t regain those 8 million jobs until the end of 2023.