MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The director of West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research says the Mountain State’s future depends on reversing the downward trend in the number of West Virginians who are working.
“This is one of the most serious economic challenges we face,” John Deskins said of numbers from the U.S. Labor Department that showed West Virginia is the only state where less than half of working-age adults, ages 16 and up, were on the job in December.
MarketWatch reported West Virginia’s labor participation rate was at 49.8 percent, down from 50 percent in October — making it the only state to ever fall below the 50 percent mark in data dating back to 1976.
Mississippi is close behind at 50.8 percent, while the national labor participation rate is at 62.7 percent.
Deskins said there are many factors contributing to the decline in workers including West Virginia’s aging population, the overall health of the state’s residents and mismatched skills among trainees and available jobs in largely rural areas.
He said, currently, West Virginia is in a “vicious cycle.”
“We have to make our state attractive to potential businesses,” he said. “If we don’t have enough workers to staff potential businesses, if we don’t have enough healthy and properly educated and trained workers, then we’re unattractive, then that’s going to be a major impediment to long-run economic growth.”
Deskins said getting more people working would improve the entire state in many ways.
“It’s a challenge that cannot be overcome overnight and this is connected, in some way or another, to virtually all our economic problems in West Virginia,” Deskins said on Friday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”