Judging job growth is not just about the number, it’s about the pace.
That is, the same number of new jobs means a lot more in a smaller community than in a major metro. And metro Atlanta’s did pretty well last year by both metrics, according to a study out this week from the business school at Arizona State University.
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Atlanta added about 70,000 jobs during the year. But Atlanta is no small town — it started the year with about 2.57 million jobs.
So a crunch of the number puts Atlanta in a three-way tie for eighth place with 3.3 percent growth – that is, the jobs added during the year represent 3.3 percent of the jobs already in the region.
Among states, Georgia also ranked eighth and tied for the honor – but this time with the state of Washington. Both grew at a 2.9 percent pace.
The fastest growing states were Utah, Florida and Nevada and Oregon.
The top 10 metro areas of 1 million or more worker in the pace of job growth in 2015, according to the study:
- Riverside, CA – up 4.5 percent
- Orlando – up 4.2 percent
- San Jose – up 4.1 percent
- Dallas – up 3.9 percent
- San Francisco – up 3.7 percent
- Denver – up 3.6 percent
- Tampa – up 3.4 percent
- Atlanta, Miami, Portland, OR – up 3.3 percent
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