The Job Map Scoreboard: Every State Ranked

Over the course of this series, we have examined America’s labor market through the lens of geography. We have mapped 158 million nonfarm payroll jobs across 50 states and the District of Columbia. We have traced the Sun Belt surge and the Rust Belt stagnation. We have measured the pandemic’s impact state by state — who fell hardest, who recovered fastest, and who still carries scars. We have ranked wages, benchmarked unemployment, and watched the center of gravity of American employment drift steadily toward the south and west.

Now, in this final episode, we bring every metric together into a single scoreboard. This is not a ranking by any one dimension — it is a multidimensional portrait of 51 distinct labor markets. California leads in sheer size but ranks poorly in unemployment. Texas leads in absolute job creation but pays below-average wages. Utah posts the best growth rate and the lightest pandemic wound, but it ranks just 33rd in total employment. There is no single “best” state — only tradeoffs.

The tables and charts that follow compile every major data point from Episodes 1 through 9 into a single reference. They are the final word on where America works, what it earns, and how its job markets compare.

The table below ranks the 20 largest state labor markets by total nonfarm employment as of January 2025. Each row includes five metrics: current employment in thousands, employment growth from 2000 to 2025, the unemployment rate as of January 2025, average weekly earnings for private-sector workers, and the percentage of jobs lost during the pandemic trough (April 2020).

Read across any row and you see a complete portrait. California is enormous — 18 million jobs, the fifth-largest economy in the world by itself — but it also has the second-highest unemployment rate on this list (5.4%) and lost more than one in seven jobs during the pandemic. Texas has grown faster than any other mega-state (+52.4%) while maintaining below-average unemployment (4.1%), but its wages ($1,207/week) lag behind coastal states. Florida has boomed (+44.3%) with rock-bottom unemployment (3.5%) but pays the second-lowest weekly earnings of any state in the top 10.

The data tells a story about tradeoffs. The states that have grown fastest tend to have lower costs and lower wages. The states that pay the most tend to have higher unemployment and higher costs. No state dominates every column.

Several patterns emerge immediately from the scoreboard. The concentration of American employment is staggering. The top four states — California, Texas, Florida, and New York — account for roughly 52.2 million jobs, or about 33% of the national total. Expand to the top 10 and the share rises to approximately 54%. Half of American jobs are located in just one-fifth of the states.

The growth column reveals the great sorting. Texas (+52.4%), Arizona (+46.9%), and Florida (+44.3%) are at the top — Sun Belt states that have attracted businesses, retirees, and workers with a combination of low taxes, warm weather, and lower costs of living. At the other end, Ohio (+0.7%) and Illinois (+2.4%) barely grew at all over 25 years. Michigan is the only state in the top 20 that actually shrank, losing 3.0% of its jobs since 2000 as the auto industry restructured.

The unemployment column tells a different story. Virginia (3.0%) and Minnesota (3.0%) have the tightest labor markets among the top 20, while California (5.4%) and Michigan (5.3%) have the loosest. There is no strong relationship between growth and unemployment — fast-growing Texas (4.1%) has a higher unemployment rate than slow-growing Wisconsin (3.2%). Growth attracts workers as much as it creates jobs.

The wage column favors the coasts. Washington ($1,421/week) and Massachusetts ($1,404/week) pay the most — driven by their technology and finance sectors, respectively. Tennessee ($1,026/week) and Missouri ($1,050/week) pay the least among the top 20. The gap between Washington and Tennessee is $395 per week, or roughly $20,500 per year. Geography is a paycheck multiplier.

Every race has a podium and a cellar. The table below identifies the best and worst performers in each of the five major metrics we have tracked across this series. These are not limited to the top 20 — they draw from all 51 job markets, including smaller states and the District of Columbia.

The results are striking in their inconsistency. No state appears as “best” more than once, and only Michigan appears as “worst” in two categories. The state that pays the highest wages (D.C.) is a city-state with a unique economic structure. The state with the lowest unemployment (South Dakota) has fewer jobs than a single California county. These extremes tell us about the diversity of American labor markets, not about any single state’s superiority.

Let us examine each category in detail.

Employment Size is dominated by population. California’s 18 million jobs reflect its status as America’s most populous state — home to the entertainment industry, Silicon Valley, the nation’s largest agricultural sector, and the busiest port complex in the Western Hemisphere. At the other extreme, Wyoming’s 296,000 jobs make it smaller than most metropolitan areas. The entire state has fewer payroll jobs than the city of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Employment Growth crowns Utah as the undisputed champion of job creation over the past quarter-century. A 66.9% increase translates to roughly 500,000 new jobs — modest in absolute terms, but extraordinary on a proportional basis. Utah’s formula has been a combination of a young, fast-growing population (the highest birth rate in the nation), business-friendly regulation, and the emergence of the “Silicon Slopes” technology corridor. Michigan, at the other end, is the only state to post a net loss. The restructuring of the auto industry, the 2008 financial crisis, and the decline of manufacturing left the state with 141,000 fewer jobs in 2025 than in 2000.

Unemployment Rate spans a 3:1 range. South Dakota’s 1.9% rate is essentially full employment — the few people without jobs are largely between positions by choice. The state’s small, agriculture-heavy economy has chronic labor shortages, not surpluses. Nevada’s 5.8% rate reflects the vulnerability of an economy built on tourism, entertainment, and hospitality — sectors with inherently higher turnover and sensitivity to economic cycles. Nevada has not had a sub-4% unemployment rate in over two decades.

Weekly Earnings show a nearly 2:1 gap between the top and bottom. D.C.’s $1,897 per week ($98,500 annualized) reflects the dominance of government, lobbying, law, and consulting in the district — all high-wage, white-collar industries. New Mexico’s $948 per week ($49,300 annualized) reflects an economy weighted toward government, tourism, and resource extraction, with limited presence of high-wage private-sector employers.

Pandemic Resilience again separates Utah and Michigan. Utah lost just 9.2% of its jobs from February to April 2020 — a severe blow by any normal measure, but the lightest of any state during the worst economic shock in 90 years. Utah’s economy had less exposure to the sectors hardest hit by lockdowns (hospitality and entertainment constitute a smaller share of its employment than the national average) and its government imposed lighter restrictions. Michigan’s 23.7% drop was the worst in the nation, a cascading shutdown that hit manufacturing, hospitality, and retail simultaneously. Michigan did not fully recover its pre-pandemic employment level until late 2022.

Every data series produces outliers — records that stand apart from the pack and tell a richer story than any average can. The table below compiles the eight most notable superlatives from the entire America’s Job Map series. These are the records, the firsts, the onlys, and the extremes that define the landscape of American employment in 2025.

The superlatives reveal the extreme dispersion of outcomes across American states. Texas added 4.9 million jobs while Michigan lost 141,000. D.C. pays $1,897 per week while New Mexico pays $948. South Dakota’s unemployment rate is 1.9% while Nevada’s is 5.8%. These are not minor variations around a national average — they are fundamentally different economic realities.

Three superlatives belong to Utah (fastest growth, pandemic resilience) and two to Michigan (only shrink, worst pandemic hit). These two states sit at opposite poles of the American job map. Utah is young, growing, diversified, and resilient. Michigan is older, stagnating, concentrated in legacy industries, and vulnerable to shocks. The gap between them has widened in every metric over the past 25 years.

Hawaii’s presence on this list is a reminder that the pandemic’s effects are not fully behind us. Nearly five years after the initial lockdowns, one state still has not recovered its pre-pandemic employment base. For Hawaii, the pandemic was not a shock — it was a structural break that exposed the fragility of a single-industry economy.

One of the most important findings of this series is the weak — and sometimes inverse — relationship between employment growth and wages. The chart below plots each of the top 20 states by employment growth (horizontal axis) against average weekly earnings (vertical axis). If fast growth and high wages went together, the points would cluster along a diagonal from bottom-left to top-right. They do not.

Washington and Massachusetts sit in the upper-middle of the growth range but lead on wages. Texas, Florida, and Arizona have boomed in growth but sit in the middle or lower tier of wages. Michigan has both the lowest growth and mid-range wages — proof that stagnation does not make a state cheap. The states attracting the most new jobs tend to be the ones where labor is less expensive, not more. This is the fundamental tradeoff of the American job map: growth flows toward low cost, and high wages tend to co-exist with moderate or slow growth.

The outlier is Washington, which has achieved both strong growth (+34.8%) and the highest wages ($1,421/week) of any state in the top 20. Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, and the broader Seattle technology ecosystem have pulled off the rare combination of rapid expansion and premium pay. But Washington is the exception, not the rule.

Behind the individual state rankings lies a broader geographic narrative. Over 25 years, America’s job map has been reshaped by five regional stories, each with its own character and trajectory.

The Sun Belt Surge. Texas, Florida, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada have collectively added more than 12 million jobs since 2000. All five grew by at least 40%. The Sun Belt’s formula is straightforward: lower taxes, lower costs, warmer weather, and business-friendly regulation attracted employers and workers from higher-cost regions. The surge shows no sign of slowing — Texas alone added more than 800,000 jobs in the past three years.

The Coastal Premiums. California, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, and New Jersey represent the high-wage, moderate-growth tier. These states have the nation’s most productive industries — technology, finance, media, biotech, and professional services — and they pay accordingly. But their growth rates have lagged the Sun Belt, limited by high housing costs, regulatory burden, and outmigration of both workers and employers.

The Rust Belt Stagnation. Ohio (+0.7%), Michigan (−3.0%), and Illinois (+2.4%) define the nation’s flatline corridor. Once the manufacturing heart of America, these states have spent a quarter-century replacing lost factory jobs with service-sector positions that often pay less. The arithmetic is harsh: Ohio added roughly 40,000 net jobs in 25 years. Texas added that many in a single quarter.

The New South. North Carolina (+30.3%), Georgia (+26.2%), and Tennessee (+23.8%) represent a different growth model from the Sun Belt. These states have attracted financial services, technology operations, and logistics hubs — not just retirement and tourism. Charlotte has become a major banking center. Atlanta is a logistics and technology hub. Nashville has diversified beyond music into healthcare and corporate headquarters. The New South is growing because it is climbing the value chain, not just the population chain.

The Northern Steadies. Minnesota (+14.6%), Wisconsin (+8.4%), Virginia (+22.8%), and Pennsylvania (+9.5%) occupy the middle ground — neither booming nor stagnating, with moderate wages and low-to-moderate unemployment. These states have diversified economies, stable populations, and few dramatic headlines. They are the ballast of the American labor market: not exciting, but durable.

No event in 25 years reshaped the American job map as quickly as the COVID-19 pandemic. Between February and April 2020, the United States lost 22 million nonfarm payroll jobs — roughly 14% of the total. But that national figure obscures enormous state-level variation.

The chart below shows the pandemic employment drop for selected states, ranked from least to most severe. The pattern is clear: states with lighter lockdown restrictions, less exposure to hospitality and tourism, and more tech-friendly economies lost fewer jobs. States with strict shutdowns, heavy reliance on in-person services, and concentrated industries lost the most.

Michigan’s −23.7% drop stands in a class by itself among large states. Nearly one in four payroll jobs vanished in eight weeks. The state’s auto plants shut down completely — a domino effect that rippled through suppliers, dealerships, and service businesses. Combined with hospitality closures and one of the strictest lockdown orders in the country, Michigan experienced a contraction that rivaled the Great Depression in speed, if not in duration.

New York (−20.1%) suffered the second-worst decline, reflecting its dense urban economy, heavy reliance on hospitality and entertainment, and the early severity of the outbreak in New York City. Pennsylvania (−18.5%) and Massachusetts (−18.1%) followed similar patterns: northeastern states with strict early lockdowns and economies concentrated in services.

At the other end, Utah (−9.2%), Texas (−11.1%), and Arizona (−11.2%) were the most resilient among large states. All three had lighter restrictions, economies less dependent on tourism, and faster reopenings. The pandemic accelerated the pre-existing trend: it rewarded the states that were already growing and punished the states that were already vulnerable.

Wages vary nearly 2:1 across American states. The table below compiles the five highest-paying and five lowest-paying jurisdictions by average weekly earnings, with the annualized equivalent for context. The disparity is not merely a reflection of cost of living — it reflects the fundamental structure of each state’s economy.

D.C.’s position at the top is structurally unique. The district is not a state in the traditional sense — it has no rural areas, no agricultural sector, no manufacturing base. Its economy is almost entirely composed of high-wage white-collar work: federal government, law firms, consulting agencies, trade associations, and think tanks. The average federal worker in D.C. earns considerably more than the average private-sector worker in most states.

The gap between D.C.’s $1,897 per week and New Mexico’s $948 is $949 — meaning a D.C. worker earns almost exactly double what a New Mexico worker earns, on average. Annualized, the difference is $49,200 — more than the total annual earnings of the average New Mexico worker. This is the defining fact of the American wage map: two workers, same country, double the paycheck.

Even excluding D.C. as a statistical outlier, the gap between Washington ($1,421) and New Mexico ($948) is still 1.5:1 — a $473 weekly difference, or $24,600 per year. Geography remains one of the largest determinants of American earnings, rivaling education and occupation.

The unemployment rate varies 3:1 across states — an even wider range than wages. South Dakota’s 1.9% and Nevada’s 5.8% represent fundamentally different labor market realities. In one state, employers cannot find enough workers. In the other, a meaningful share of the workforce is still searching.

The tightest labor markets share a common thread: small populations, limited in-migration, and economies with steady demand for labor. South Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Montana, and Nebraska are all rural or semi-rural states with aging workforces and chronic worker shortages. Their low unemployment is not a sign of dynamism — it is a sign of scarcity. These states do not have enough workers to fill the jobs they have, let alone to attract new employers.

The loosest labor markets are more heterogeneous. Nevada’s 5.8% reflects the inherent volatility of a tourism-dependent economy. California’s 5.4% reflects a combination of factors: a large undocumented workforce, high housing costs that trap workers in unemployment, the aftershocks of technology-sector layoffs, and the sheer size and diversity of its labor force. Michigan’s 5.3% is the long tail of deindustrialization — a structural unemployment that has persisted through two full business cycles.

D.C.’s presence among the worst unemployment rates is paradoxical: the highest-paying jurisdiction also has one of the highest unemployment rates. The explanation lies in the district’s extreme inequality. The high-wage government and professional-services economy exists alongside a large population of lower-income residents who face barriers to entry into those industries. D.C. has jobs aplenty — but they require credentials, clearances, and connections that a significant portion of its population lacks.

Over ten episodes, the data has pointed consistently toward seven fundamental conclusions about the American job map. These are not predictions or opinions — they are what the numbers show.

1. America’s 158 million jobs are extremely concentrated. The top four states hold 33% of all nonfarm payroll employment. The top 10 hold 54%. This concentration has increased over 25 years as Texas and Florida have grown faster than the rest, further widening the gap between the largest states and everyone else.

2. The Sun Belt surge is the defining trend of the past quarter-century. Texas (+52.4%), Florida (+44.3%), Arizona (+46.9%), Utah (+66.9%), and Nevada (roughly +45%) have collectively added more than 12 million jobs since 2000. The American economy is migrating south and west, pulled by lower costs, lighter regulation, and warmer climate. This is not a cyclical phenomenon — it has persisted through two recessions and a pandemic.

3. The Rust Belt has stagnated. Ohio (+0.7%), Michigan (−3.0%), and Illinois (+2.4%) have effectively flatlined over 25 years. These states lost manufacturing jobs and replaced them with lower-wage service positions, resulting in minimal net growth and persistent above-average unemployment. The Rust Belt’s share of national employment has declined steadily and continues to do so.

4. Wages vary 2:1 across states. From D.C.’s $1,897 per week to New Mexico’s $948, the American wage map is as unequal as many international comparisons. A worker in Washington state earns 50% more than a worker in Tennessee for the same week of work, on average. Geography is a wage multiplier that rivals education.

5. Unemployment varies 3:1. South Dakota’s 1.9% and Nevada’s 5.8% represent different labor market universes. The tightest markets are small, rural states with aging populations. The loosest are large, urban states with diverse but volatile economies. There is no strong relationship between growth and unemployment — fast-growing states attract workers as quickly as they create jobs.

6. The pandemic accelerated existing trends. States that were already growing (Utah, Texas, Arizona) weathered the shock better and recovered faster. States that were already vulnerable (Michigan, New York, Hawaii) suffered deeper declines and slower recoveries. COVID-19 did not change the direction of the map — it compressed a decade of drift into two years.

7. Michigan is the cautionary tale. The only state to lose jobs over 25 years. The hardest hit by the pandemic. Above-average unemployment. Mid-range wages. Michigan is what happens when an economy fails to diversify away from a single industry (auto manufacturing) and then gets hit by multiple shocks in succession. It is the clearest example that economic geography is not destiny — it is the consequence of choices, investments, and vulnerabilities compounded over decades.

For reference, the table below summarizes what each episode in this series covered, the core question it answered, and the key metric it highlighted. Together, the ten episodes form a comprehensive atlas of American employment geography.

The American job map is not static. The trends documented in this series are still in motion, and several forces could accelerate or disrupt them in the years ahead.

Remote work has partially decoupled employment from geography. Workers who can perform their jobs from anywhere have migrated from high-cost coastal cities to lower-cost Sun Belt and Mountain West locations, bringing their coastal salaries with them. This influx has boosted housing prices in cities like Austin, Boise, and Nashville while providing a talent pool to local employers. If remote work persists — and the data suggests it will — the Sun Belt surge will continue to draw both companies and workers.

Climate risk presents a countervailing force. The Sun Belt states that have grown fastest are also among the most exposed to extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes, and water scarcity. Arizona and Nevada face long-term water constraints. Florida confronts hurricane and flood risk. Texas has experienced grid failures during extreme cold events. At some point, climate exposure could slow or reverse the growth patterns of the past 25 years, though there is little evidence of that happening yet.

Industrial policy is attempting to reshape the map from the top down. The CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and related legislation are directing hundreds of billions of dollars toward semiconductor fabrication, battery manufacturing, and clean energy production — much of it targeted at the Rust Belt and Sun Belt. Intel’s Ohio fabrication facility, Toyota’s North Carolina battery plant, and Ford’s Tennessee EV complex represent a potential inflection point for states that have lost manufacturing share for decades. Whether these investments generate enough jobs to bend the trend lines remains to be seen.

AI and automation will affect every state differently, depending on industry mix. States with heavy concentrations of routine cognitive work (legal research, financial analysis, customer service) may face displacement, while states with high concentrations of physical and skilled trades work (construction, healthcare, logistics) may be relatively insulated. The geography of AI’s impact is just beginning to take shape.