WorkForce West Virginia recently released data that shows the state’s labor force has been in a steady decline for the last 14 months.
The Mountain State has lost more than 4,000 jobs and about 7,600 people from its workforce in the last year. The amount of people leaving the workforce is more than the amount of jobs lost because our workforce is aging, retiring and we have a high rate of people with a disability or chronic illness that can’t work or have trouble finding work, according to Kelly Allen, executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. There’s also people who decide to no longer work so that they can stay home to care for a child or family member.
At least 400 federal jobs have been lost in West Virginia from cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but that number could be higher, according to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. Data related to those cuts is delayed, and doesn’t include recent layoffs or employees who were placed on administrative leave or took involuntary buyouts.
The agencies who have been most impacted by those cuts are the Bureau of the Fiscal Service in Parkersburg, NIOSH in Morgantown, the Job Corps Center in Charleston and National Park Service staff in the Monongahela National Forest and the New River Gorge National Park.
The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce is alarmed about the job report.
Chamber President Steve Roberts said when West Virginia was ranked as last in the country for job growth that the chamber started to look into the numbers.
In fact, between 2024 and May 2025, the state had the largest decrease in non-farm employment in the U.S. at 1.3%, according to the report.
“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,” Roberts told WV MetroNews.
WorkForce West Virginia’s jobs report showed that several key industries — hospitality, manufacturing, mining and retail — all have declining numbers.
Roberts said the workforce “has shifted from being a manual labor workforce to a digital workforce, and we need to tell our children that.”
“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,” he said.
Sounds like investing in our public schools and teachers would be a great way to address job loss.
At the Chamber of Commerce’s Business Summit last week, Gov. Patrick Morrisey revealed his big economic plan to try to get the state’s job numbers back up — cutting regulations, investing in energy and scrutinizing the use of taxpayer dollars to lure businesses into West Virginia.
Cutting regulations sounds worrying, especially if it’s environmental regulations, which Morrisey has proven not to be a fan of. However, he did give a good example — a bill passed this year that allows occupational licensing reciprocity, which allows new residents to transfer their occupational and professional licenses from another state to West Virginia.
If that’s the kind of regulations we’re cutting, then great. But if he’s going to follow in President Donald Trump’s footsteps — which he most often does — we might see Morrisey trying to cut health and safety regulations that are meant to protect workers. Risking people’s health and lives to help businesses is never the answer.
To invest in energy, Morrisey launched his “Economic Backyard Brawl,” to focus on developing energy infrastructure to compete with other states. This is where the microgrids and data centers come in that residents are overwhelmingly opposing throughout the state.
Morrisey ended his speech at the summit talking about how the state’s workforce could be improved — by doing a complete “overhaul” of the WorkForce West Virginia website.
“Recruiting, retention and retraining has to be one of our big hallmarks,” Morrisey said.
You know what would help with recruitment and retention? Do literally anything to help with child care. Lawmakers need to start thinking of the children. Investing in child care is imperative.
Research by the tech company Wonderschool found that about half of West Virginia businesses reported that child care challenges frequently or very frequently affected their employees’ ability to work. And 70% reported they were doing nothing to help with those challenges.
We’ve had two legislative sessions where lawmakers said lack of affordable child care is a major problem and then did nothing to help the industry or the families that need it. There are areas with no child care and where there are facilities most have very limited spots. How can people work if there’s no one to watch their children? Or if they can’t even afford to put them in daycare?
Child care centers are losing money, resulting in closures. I can’t think of a better place to use some of that $254.8 million surplus in the state budget.
