CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Concerns are growing after a Workforce West Virginia report revealed a decline of more than 7,000 civilian jobs and a total employment decrease of more than 4,000 in the state in the last year.
The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce has been tracking these trends and is among the groups most alarmed. Chamber president Steve Roberts said they really started digging into the numbers when a list ranked West Virginia last in the country in job growth.
“That’s one of those lists we don’t want to be on. ‘Why don’t we go in and take a deeper dive and take a deeper look? What can we figure out is going on?’ and the more we looked, the more concerned we became,” he said.
In addition to the overall numbers, Workforce’s July jobs report revealed falling numbers in several key industries within the state. With statistics showing decline in mining, manufacturing, hospitality, and retail, one of the Chamber’s findings has been a worrying trend in the private sector.
“What we’ve seen is that since 2015, we have fewer private sector jobs in 2025 than we did in 2015,” Roberts said.
“When I began my working career, West Virginia had almost 130,000 manufacturing workers,” he said. “Today, we have right at 45,000, maybe 45,400 manufacturing workers. If you’ve lost 85,000 jobs in a particular segment in my working career, that’s something we ought to be looking at.”
A changing economy is one of the key factors that Roberts points to as a reason for declining jobs in the state. He believes the current economy favors the educated, and as a result, West Virginians need to make sure the next generation is prepared for the opportunities that could be available to them.
“We really have to look at education, how we’re performing, and what we can do to help our kids be more prepared for the future. The workforce has shifted from being a manual labor workforce to a digital workforce, and we need to tell our children that,” he said.
Story by Daniel Woods, MetroNews