The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently released its data on non-farming employees by metropolitan area for 2015. In a recent statement released by the White House, unemployment has reached 4.9% and over the past two years, U.S. businesses have added more jobs than any time since the 1990s!

We built a map to provide a visualization of the number of jobs added by metropolitan area, seen below. The higher the cone rising out of the map, the greater the number of jobs added in that area. Based on the data, over 2.4 million jobs were created across states from 2014 to 2015! The state with the highest number of jobs created was California (464,200) and the state with the largest decline in jobs was North Dakota (-19,000).

Metropolitan Areas with the Largest Number of Jobs Created

Take a look at the top 5 metro areas with the largest increase in jobs:

• New York-Newark-Jersey City had the highest increase in jobs for any metropolitan area in the country with 156,400 new jobs.

• Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA came in second with 135,100 jobs.

• Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX was third with 98,900 jobs.

• Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA came in fourth with 77,800 jobs.

• Washington-Arlington-Alexandria rounded out the top five with 68,500 jobs.

Metropolitan Areas with the Largest Decline in Jobs

Take a look at the top 5 metro areas with the largest decreases in jobs:

• Lafayette, LA had the highest job decline for any metropolitan area with 5,500 less jobs in 2015.

• Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, IL had the second highest job decline with 4,500 less jobs.

• Houma-Thibodaux, LA came in third with 3,600 less jobs.

• Shreveport-Bossier City, LA came in fourth with 3,000 overall job decline.

• Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA rounded out the bottom five in job decline with 2,800 jobs lost between 2014 and 2015.

Metropolitan Areas with the Highest Overall Growth Rate

Take a look at the top 5 metro areas with the highest job growth rate:

• Idaho Falls, ID had the highest job growth for any metropolitan area in the country at 4.5%.

• Salisbury, DE came in second with 4.45% job growth.

• San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA was third in job growth at 4.44%.

• Another Idaho metro area, Coeur d’Alene, came in a close fourth with 4.44% job growth.

• Lima, OH rounded out the top five with 4.16% growth.

Metropolitan Areas Experiencing Job Decline

Of the 386 metro areas represented in the BLS dataset, 93 experienced job decline while 13 did not experience growth at all.  Take a look at the 5 metro areas with the largest decline in jobs.

• Pine Bluff, AR had the highest job decline rate for any metropolitan area with a 7.0% decline in jobs.

• Cape Girardeau, MO had the second highest job decline rate with -3.8% job growth

• Williamsport, PA came in third with -3.7% job growth rate.

• Houma-Thibodaux, LA came in fourth with 3.5% overall job decline rate.

• Casper, WY rounded out the bottom five in job growth with a 3.0% decline rate in jobs.

Highest Growth Rate in Top Metro Areas by Jobs

• The Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell metropolitan area had the highest job growth at 3.0% out of the top 10 metro areas by number of jobs.

• The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area had the second largest job growth of the top ten metro areas with 2.9%.

• The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metropolitan area was third with job growth of 2.3%.

• The Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metropolitan area had the lowest job growth in the top ten metropolitan areas at just 0.6%.

Widespread Growth Across U.S.

The BLS numbers showed that the number of jobs grew in 280 of the 386 metropolitan areas. This growth was fueled by over 2.4 million new jobs, with over 500,000 from five metropolitan areas (New York-Newark-Jersey City, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, and Washington-Arlington-Alexandria). Three metropolitan areas in Louisiana had one of the top 5 largest job declines. Although some metropolitan areas experienced job decline, there were more jobs created than lost in the U.S. overall!