This City Has the Fastest Job Growth in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 20, 9:30AM EST

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This City Has the Fastest Job Growth in America — © benedek / iStock Unreleased via Getty Images

America currently has an odd mix between unemployment and people quitting jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the jobless rate shrank to 3.9% last month, as the economy added 199,000 jobs. However, 4.5 million people quit their jobs or changed jobs in November, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. The number is extraordinarily high.

One theory about why people have left jobs in such high numbers is that older Americans have retired in large numbers because of workplace risks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Another is that government payments to supplement incomes have allowed people to stay out of work for longer than usual. Yet another is that people who had very low-paying jobs believe that wages will rise quickly over the next several months as the jobs market tightens.

Location also affects job growth. Americans have become more mobile in the past year. People who live in expensive coastal cities like New York and San Francisco have moved inland to find more affordable places to live. This trend has been boosted by the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has made it easier to work from home, perhaps permanently. Some of these smaller cities have ballooned in population because of this unusual migration.

For its recently released State of the Labor Market report, Indeed Hiring Lab, using proprietary data, measured “US job postings on Indeed.com on January 7 were 61.9% above February 1, 2020, the pre-pandemic baseline.”
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The study looked at employment growth by both job sector and location. Among jobs, Human Resources postings rose 128.2%, followed by Software Development at 115.6% and Logistic Support at 108.7%. The job category that lagged the most was Beauty & Wellness, with growth of 1.5%.

Based on city job postings, Boise topped the list at 94.8%. Because of an influx of people coming to the city, home prices there have risen 30% in the past year, well above the national average. The rush of people to Boise is not new. The Census Bureau shows that its population increased by 24.03% between 2010 and 2020, which makes it one of the fastest-growing cities in America.

These are the 10 cities with the fastest job growth:

Boise City, Idaho (94.8%)
Spokane, Wash. (90.8%)
Durham, N.C. (90.7%)
Las Vegas, Nev. (88.9%)
Phoenix, Ariz. (86.2%)
Austin, Texas (82.3%)
Atlanta, Ga. (80.9%)
Greensborough, N.C. (79.5%)
Little Rock, Ark. (79.3%)
Virginia Beach, Va. (78.7%)

Click here to see which is the fastest-growing city in each state.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.