BLS: Pacific Region Leads in Job Creation

In third-quarter 2018, the Pacific region regained the lead as the engine of national job creation. Third-quarter employment data by state was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday. The state data follows the national figures that were published on Oct. 5 and confirm the strength of the labor market.

The states compile their employment numbers independently of the feds, and then both are reported by the BLS. In the 23 quarters since and including Q1 2013, the feds reported total job creation of 14,436,000 and the states reported 14,286,000, a difference of just 1.1 percent. Our report covers only the lower 48 states, and the state numbers don’t include those such as the military that are employed overseas. Therefore, the fed and state totals are impressively close. Figure 1 shows the history of federal data totals since 1992 and Figure 2 shows the same format for the state data.