Where the jobs are.

• Author: Frazzini, Kevin
• Position: Statestats - Brief article

It's probably no surprise that health care produces more jobs than any other sector. The field added 5 million workers from 1997 to 2012, a 37.1 percent increase, according to the most recent Economic Census. A more surprising area of growth? Mining. It grew by 77.5 percent and now has some 900,000 workers.

All states have added jobs since their economies hit bottom during the Great Recession, but the gains are far from evenly distributed. The Pew Research Center compared each state's lowest employment rate after January 2008 with its rate in March 2015. The average growth rate during that period was 8 percent nationally, but individual results varied wildly, from 28.86 in North Dakota to 2.16 in West Virginia.

Which Fields Are Growing?

Below are employment trends in major areas of the economy from 1997 to 2012. Health care had the biggest gains...