Treading water

Buena Vista and Cherokee counties have essentially recovered the jobs lost during the pandemic, according to figures compiled by The New York Times from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Buena Vista’s job count was down just 0.3% from 2019 to 2023, while Cherokee’s grew by 0.8%. This is better performance than many rural counties.

The Sun Belt generally recovered much faster, and the Upper Midwest lagged. We were served well by food processing and light ag manufacturing, which simply had to go on despite the pandemic. Construction jobs boomed in Buena Vista by about 8%, while health care and education jobs declined by 14%. In Cherokee, health and education grew 8% while manufacturing jobs expanded by 13%. Hospitality suffered.

Overall, the two counties are not growing their labor market. The largest declines are in white-collar jobs, according to the statistics.

The US economy in this remarkable economic expansion has created far more jobs than what were lost during the pandemic. That is not necessarily true in Buena Vista or Cherokee counties, where the labor market is flat and unemployment is low. This suggests that our regional and local economic development mechanisms greased by tax dollars are not working that well. It also suggests that the federal recovery programs have not been as successful here as they have been in other places. Workers here continue to tread water.