Trendsights Newsletter

Labor Market Explorer for U.S. Metropolitan Areas
The Labor Market Explorer is a set of dynamic and interactive maps from the Milken Institute with information at the metropolitan area and county levels. This interactive tool allows the user to track employment changes across eight major economic sectors.
Southeast Region Career Grades
The Southeast region is projected to have over 14,800 annual job openings through 2030. Career Grades are assigned letter grades based on an occupation’s outlook over the next decade. In general, higher graded occupations earn more and have higher growth rates. The majority of openings in the Southeast region are in A, B, and C grade occupations. Management Occupations have the highest concentration of grade A and B outlook jobs in the region.
Cost of Living Third Quarter 2022
Missouri had the 9th lowest cost of living in the United States for the third quarter of 2022. In general, the most expensive areas to live were Hawaii, Alaska, the Northeast, and the West Coast. The least expensive areas were the Midwest and Southern states.
Real-Time Labor Market Summaries
Missouri employers posted 245,740 job ads from July through September 2022, with 76 percent for full-time positions. Health Care and Social Assistance was the industry with the largest number of job postings, making up 25 percent of the total. The St. Louis Region had more than 100,000 job postings in the quarter, which was the most of any region. See summaries for the state and each region in these quarterly briefs.
MERIC Halloween Fun Facts
Celebrate Halloween with some frightening facts and figures. Total spending in the nation for Halloween is estimated to reach $10.6 billion, with the average person spending $100.45. Indulge in a Milky Way, the most popular candy in Missouri, or visit the Missouri State Penitentiary for a ghost tour. Click on the link to learn more scary facts about Halloween.
Missouri Economic and Workforce Report
The 2022 Missouri Economic and Workforce Report provides a broad overview of Missouri’s economy in the last year, tracking a selection of meaningful indicators. For the last two years, this annual report has included unique economic circumstances as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing recovery. See the snapshot of Missouri’s economy and a profile of each of the 10 regions in this annual report.
Missouri Career Grade Summaries
With nearly 800 occupations to consider, choosing a career can be challenging. Missouri Career Grades is a tool to help compare the future outlook of occupations in Missouri. To make the comparisons easier, letter grades, called Career Grades, are assigned to various occupations within the state based on each occupation’s outlook over the next decade. Occupations in the Grade A category have the best outlook while Grade F occupations have the worst outlook. Grades are based on a combination of projected total job openings, projected percent growth, and the average wage of an occupation. See the top outlook occupations for Missouri or one of the ten Missouri WDA regions in these short briefs.
Young Adult Migration Patterns
Nearly six in 10 young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up, and eight in 10 live within 100 miles, according to a new study by researchers at the U.S. Census Bureau and Harvard University. This study examines the migration patterns of young adults and explores where people go between childhood and young adulthood. It also analyzes how those patterns differ across demographic groups and whether people move greater distances to take advantage of job opportunities. Explore the patterns in Missouri and other locations with this new research.
Entrepreneurship in Missouri
The Early-Stage Entrepreneurship series is a set of measures that represents new business creation in the United States, integrating several high-quality, timely sources of information on early-stage entrepreneurship. This state-level series is the first set of data in the Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship, and is presented across four indicators – rate of new entrepreneurs, opportunity share of new entrepreneurs, startup early job creation, and startup early survival rate. Data for Missouri and other states is available in this interactive tool.
September Online Job Postings
There were more than 71,000 new job postings in Missouri in September 2022, according to data from Lightcast™. This was down from August 2022. General Medical and Surgical Hospitals, Restaurants and Other Eating Places, and Insurance Carriers were the industries with the most new postings in the state during the month.
Business Index Rises in Missouri
Missouri’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for September was 50.4, increasing 2.1 points from August and pushing into expansion territory, according to the monthly Mid-America Business Conditions Survey, conducted by Creighton University, Omaha, NE. Economists consider the index a key economic indicator, measuring factors such as new orders, production, supplier delivery times, backlogs, inventories, prices, employment, import orders and exports.
Race and Ethnicity in Missouri Counties
Did you know that 17.6 percent of the population in Sullivan County, Missouri is of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity? Explore race and ethnicity trends for states and counties with this U.S. Census Bureau tool that shows population changes between the 2010 and 2020 Census.
August Job Ad Comparisons
Job postings increased by 51 percent from August 2021 to August 2022. In August 2022, there were 92,290 online job postings compared to 61,150 in August 2021. The seasonally adjusted August 2022 unemployment rate of 2.5 percent in Missouri was unchanged from the previous month’s (July 2022) rate, and lower than the previous year’s (August 2021) rate of 4.1 percent.
Census Community Explorer
Explore this tool from the U.S. Census Bureau that combines select demographic, business, and resilience data to help users identify potentially underserved areas of their state, county, and community.
ACS 2021 1-Year Estimates Released
The 2021 American Community Survey 1-year estimates are now available from the U.S. Census Bureau. This release includes statistics for language, education, commuting, employment, mortgage status and rent, as well as income, poverty and health insurance. The 1-year estimates are available for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, every congressional district, and all counties and places with populations of 65,000 or more.
August Online Job Postings
There were more than 92,000 new job postings in Missouri in August 2022, according to data from Lightcast™. This was down slightly from July 2022. General Medical and Surgical Hospitals, Restaurants and Other Eating Places, and Insurance Carriers were the industries with the most new postings in the state during the month.
Hartville, MO is the U.S. Center of Population
Hartville, MO was the nation's new center of population in 2020, as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau. The center of population is a point where an imaginary, flat, weightless and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if everyone were of identical weight. This is the fifth time in a row that the center of population has fallen in Missouri. A celebration is planned in Hartville on September 21, 2022.
July Job Ad Comparisons
Job postings increased 57 percent from July 2021 to July 2022. In July 2022, there were 99,580 online job postings compared to 63,490 in July 2021. The occupations with the largest increase over the year were for Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Drivers and Computer Occupations, All Other.
Missouri 2020 to 2030 Projected Growth Due to Pandemic Recovery
Missouri experienced large job losses in 2020, due to the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as did the rest of the United States. The 2020 to 2030 projections, therefore, are starting from a base year that had relatively low employment. Due to that low base year and the recovery from the pandemic, a relatively high growth rate is projected between 2020 and 2030. Some of this growth is attributable to recovering jobs that were lost during the pandemic. This analysis estimates the recovery effect on the Missouri industry and occupational projections data.
Occupational Projections 2030
Occupational projections show Missouri is projected to have more than 352,000 total job openings each year from 2020 to 2030. Of the top ten occupations with the most total openings, three are in the Food Preparation and Serving-related major occupation group. Occupational projections for both Missouri and its regions provide an outlook for job growth in the future.
Cost of Living Second Quarter 2022
Missouri had the 7th lowest cost of living in the United States for the second quarter 2022. The city with the lowest cost of living in Missouri for the quarter was Joplin with an index at 80.7. In general, the most expensive areas to live were Hawaii, Alaska, and states in the northeast and on the west coast. The least expensive were in the middle and southern parts of the U.S. MERIC derives the cost of living index for each state by averaging the indices of the C2ER Cost of Living Index for participating cities and metropolitan areas in that state.
Credentials Offer Manufacturing Workers Alternative Education Pathway
Earning a manufacturing credential may increase earnings and prospects of getting work in manufacturing even without a college degree, according to new U.S. Census Bureau research. Industry credentials are formal documentations by an industry organization of a participant’s skill attainment.
Southwest Real-Time Labor Market Information
Employers in the Southwest Region posted 5,140 job ads from April through June 2022, with 74 percent for full-time positions. Health Care and Social Assistance was the industry with the largest number of job postings, making up 24 percent of the total. By occupation, the largest number of postings were for Retail Salespersons, Registered Nurses, and Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers.
U.S. Census Bureau Missouri Profile
New U.S. Census Bureau profiles for states provide a quick look at statistics about the people, income, housing, family structure, education, health, and economy for each state. This tool with both graphs and maps can help users understand the composition and characteristics of Missouri’s more than 6.1 million people and thousands of businesses.