The number of Iowans working at a job has hit an all-time high. This month’s report from Iowa Workforce finds nonfarm employment at one-Million, 516-thousand, six-hundred. Ann Wagner, a labor analyst for Iowa Workforce Development, says overall, the state added 36-hundred jobs in November.
The strongest industry was trade and transportation, which includes trucking, wholesale and retail trade, and it added 17-hundred jobs in November. Wagner says that industry area’s been weak for several years. That sector added 3200 jobs during the whole year, but Wagner says the industry that added the most jobs of all was construction, particularly the trades.
Those types of trades are the workers on home, business and industrial buildings and they include all kinds of laborers like electricians, plumbers, cement masons, roofers, tile-layers — a wide variety of people in those construction trades. For the year so far, the analyst says most industries are growing. If there’s a field that’s been stable to slightly down, it’s the information sector. That includes not only newspapers and other publishers but internet providers.
She says while there are still a lot of jobs in the field, technology and dot-com were “overheated” before the recent recession led to a dropoff and there still are not enough jobs in that field for everyone hoping to find one. The national Worldcom scandal also affected a corporation with Iowa roots and cut into the high-tech sector in the state.
Related web sites:
Workforce job-market report