• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Kentucky Center for Economic Policy

Kentucky Center for Economic Policy

   

  • About Us
  • Press Room
  • Donate
  • Summer Policy Institute 2023

Research That Works for Kentucky

  • Topics
    • Budget & Tax
    • Criminal Justice
    • Economic Security
    • Education
    • Health Care
    • Jobs & The Economy
  • Types
    • News
    • Op-Ed
    • Research

   

  • About Us
  • Press Room
  • Donate
  • Summer Policy Institute 2023

Copyright © 2023 KyPolicy Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Sitemap

Analysis

Kentucky’s Lopsided Recovery

Jason Bailey | April 30, 2015

Job growth in Kentucky has picked up over the last year, and every county saw a decline in its unemployment rate from March 2014 to March 2015. However, a closer look shows that the economic recovery is not spread evenly across the state, but is concentrated in a minority of counties in more prosperous parts of Kentucky.

Only 28 of the state’s 120 counties have more people employed in March 2015 than in March 2007, before the recession hit. As the map below shows, those counties where the growth in residents employed has been strongest are mostly clustered in central and northern Kentucky. Big job gains (in both percentage growth and raw job numbers) are in counties like Scott, Oldham, Woodford, Jessamine and Campbell, along with the large counties Fayette and Jefferson.

More On Jobs & The Economy: Tracking the Economic Recovery from COVID-19 in Kentucky

In contrast, 24 counties have at least 20 percent fewer people employed than in 2007, many of them in eastern and northeastern Kentucky. Pike and Boyd counties both have over 4,000 fewer people employed.

To view a larger version of the map, click here.

While Kentucky’s overall economy is showing improvement, the recovery is not being felt equally by different regions of the state. The more-populated areas close to major transportation networks have seen job growth in sectors like health care and education, a rebound in the auto industry and resurgence in industries like transportation and logistics. Rural Kentucky, meanwhile, falls farther behind as traditional industries like coal and marginal branch plant manufacturing have declined and not been replaced.

We need continued growth in the overall economy to pull those counties further up. And we need to invest in targeted strategies to create new jobs in rural areas—through SOAR and other efforts and by embracing ideas like the Power+ Plan—or Kentucky’s geographic divides will continue to widen.

FacebookTweetLinkedInEmail

Primary Sidebar

Get KyPolicy news updates in your inbox

Sign Up

Sidebar

Perspectives

Shorting State Workers’ Pay Hurts Us All

Cutting Bourbon Industry Taxes Harms the Communities That Sustain It

Lawmakers Should Help Our Kids, Not Lock More Up in Failing Juvenile System

Income Tax Reduction Is Another Blow to Rural Kentucky

Kentucky Should Not Volunteer for Greater Inequality by Becoming More Like Tennessee

Other Jobs & The Economy Items

Analysis

Tracking the Economic Recovery from COVID-19 in Kentucky

Untitled design

Analysis

The State of Working Kentucky 2022

Total Kentucky State Government Employees 1991 2021

Analysis

Personnel Cabinet Recommends Improving Compensation to Stave off State Workforce Crisis

Ky. Policy

Footer

Research that works for Kentucky

433 Chestnut Street, Berea, KY 40403

Phone: 859-756-4605

General information and inquiries: info@kypolicy.org

   

Help us make the facts free and accessible to everyone. That’s how Kentucky will thrive.

Donate

  • Topics
    • Budget & Tax
    • Criminal Justice
    • Economic Security
    • Education
    • Health Care
    • Jobs & The Economy
  • Work
    • News
    • Op-Ed
    • Research
  • About Us
  • Press Room
  • Contact

Get KyPolicy news updates in your inbox

Sign Up

Copyright © 2023 KyPolicy Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Sitemap

made by P&P
Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!