Employment in Kentucky has surpassed its peak numbers from just prior to the recession, although the state’s job growth rate lags behind the United States as a whole, according to a report released by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
"Kentucky as a whole added jobs (7.4 percent) at a slower clip than the United States(8.4 percent), but greater than the growth rate of all border states except Tennessee and Indiana," said Paul Coomes, senior economic advisor for the state’s chamber of commerce, who conducted the report. "And Kentucky now has about 20,000 more jobs than it had at the peak of the last national expansion, in 2007. Additionally, the state has added manufacturing jobs at three times the rate seen nationally, though remains 12,000 jobs below its previous cyclical peak in 2007."
The report, based on recently released job and payroll growth data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, provides information on the following Kentucky regions: Lexington, Mountains, Cumberland, Bowling Green-Hopkinsville, Paducah-Purchase, Owensboro-Henderson, Louisville, Northern Kentucky and Ashland. The data also includes organized job and payroll data by county and bordering states, and includes tables and charts that summarize recent economic growth.
Employees in Kentucky earned $19.7 billion in wages and salaries in the April to June quarter of 2015, according to the report, with more than half (58 percent) of the statewide payroll earned in the Louisville and Lexington regions. Kentucky workers earned an average of $10,700 in the second quarter of 2015, as compared to $12,600 nationally.
Additionally, wages and salaries in five of the nine economic regions grew by 20 percent since 2009, led by Louisville, Northern Kentucky and Lexington. At the same time, however, payrolls declined by 13 percent in the Mountain region.
Kentucky manufacturing jobs totaled 241,000 as of June 2015, the report showed. While Kentucky’s rate of growth for manufacturing jobs has tripled the national rate recently, the number of manufacturing jobs in the state still remains 12,000 jobs below its previous cyclical peak from 2007.
The state has also increased its share of U.S. manufacturing jobs from 1.8 percent to 2.0 percent during the past 10 years, and four of the nine Kentucky regions in the report have experienced stronger growth in manufacturing pay than the United States as a whole.
For more information, check the full report at kychamber.com/2015economy.