Oklahoma made the biggest jump in the analysis of job creation rankings, from No. 31 to No. 9. The state has seen a reversal of the “brain drain” it experienced in the late 2010s.More than half of the nation’s jobs created in the past five years have come in two states: Texas and Florida.They’re at the forefront of a job creation revolution in which states with lower wages and a lower cost of living are gaining the highest share of new jobs, according to a new Stateline analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.Meanwhile, high-wage states such as California, New York, Washington state and Massachusetts tumbled out of the top 10. California, which had the highest share of new jobs from 2014-2019, crashed to the very bottom in job creation.The changes closely follow state-by-state labor trends in the years during and since the COVID-19 pandemic. Employers have been less willing to create jobs in higher-wage states. Workers, meanwhile, are avoiding skyrocketing housing costs and taking advantage of new options for remote work.“In the pandemic’s wake, workers are likely playing a bigger role because many have new flexibility about where to work and live,” said Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Michigan.“About 1 in 10 U.S. workers now work fully remote jobs, an expansion enabled by organizations’ investments in distributed work capacity during the pandemic,” Sojourner said. “Many families with high-paying remote jobs migrated towards areas with lower living costs because they’re no longer tethered to a high-cost place.”Between 2014 and 2019, California gained 1.4 million new jobs — more than any other state and 12% of the national total. But for the past five years California has been dead last in job creation, losing about 214,000 jobs. Texas moved into first place during that time, seeing almost 1.3 million new jobs, almost one-third of all new jobs created nationally.Florida was not far behind, with about 911,000 new jobs, almost 25% of the national total of about 4 million.Besides California, which plunged from No. 1 to No. 51 in job creation for the states and the District of Columbia, New York fell from No. 5 to No. 50, and Massachusetts from No. 7 to No. 47.Washington state, Michigan and Tennessee also fell out of the top 10, while Arizona, Utah, Virginia, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Colorado moved into the top 10.High ...
