Southern states boast of the most job growth, but there’s a caveat
People in the southern region of the U.S. may have a slight advantage over those in other areas of the country when it comes to job hunting. A new report shows that the region is set to see 20 percent job growth between now and 2020, while the national rate will be somewhere around 17 percent. But even with that advantage, data shows that the South will lag when it comes to economic growth due to the types of jobs that are available in the region.
The report, A Decade Behind: Breaking Out of the Low-Skill Trap in the Southern Economy, done by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, found that the type of jobs in the South require less education that the national average. According to the report, 53 percent of jobs in the South require postsecondary education, while the figure for the nation as a whole is 59 percent. The South is not expected to catch up with today’s national average until 2020, when the U.S. figure is projected to reach 66 percent.
The forecast looks even more dim for Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia, which are expected to see 51 percent of jobs requiring postsecondary education.
Why is the forecast so grim for most of the nation’s southern-most states?
“The issue is what kinds of jobs will be created; they will tend to be lower-skilled, lower-pay positions that follow the industrial profiles of the various states,” explains the report’s executive summary.
