Arizona loses thousands of jobs in August
Arizona loses thousands of jobs in August
By Zachery Schmidt Fri, September 25, 2026 at 9:00 PM UTC
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A job candidate writes on a document while meeting with an interviewer across a desk. Photo: Sora Shimazaki / Pexels
(The Center Square) - Arizona lost thousands of jobs from July to August, according to the latest figures.
Common Sense Institute Arizona released a report showing that Arizona lost 4,100 jobs in the one-month span. Arizona ranked 43rd in job creation during the period.
The report found the state’s economy shrank by 0.13%. Arizona was one of 16 states that reported month-over-month job losses.
Doug Walls, the labor market information director for the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity, said August’s month-over-month job numbers mark the second time in the last 10 months when the state has experienced seasonally adjusted job loss.
Walls told The Center Square that local, state and federal governments lost nearly 2,000 jobs from July to August.
The report noted six of the 11 industrial sectors saw job losses month over month.
Zach Milne, CSI’s director of policy and research, said after revisions to Arizona’s June and July job numbers, employment was “effectively flat” those two months, gaining only 100 jobs.
The monthly job numbers looked “more sour” than the August year-over-year figures, Milne said.
Year over year, Arizona gained 21,000 jobs, growing at 0.64%, according to the report. This ranked 17th in America and nearly doubled the national average of 0.38%.
Walls said Arizona continues to see “moderate” year-over-year job growth, compared to 2023 and 2024, which he described as the years Arizona rebounded economically from the COVID-19 pandemic.
For nearly two years, Arizona has seen year-over-year job growth of less than 1%, Walls explained.
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Health care, specifically, has created around 70% of Arizona’s jobs year over year, he noted.
Milne told The Center Square that factoring in that “these 21,000 people working a full year at the average wage and average weekly hours” would give Arizona an additional $30 million in income tax revenue.
He noted there are many “assumptions baked into this number that may not reflect reality.”
“Remember, we cite seasonally adjusted figures, which are helpful for measuring economic trends but don't fully translate to actual people with jobs," Milne said. "Also, average state wage calculations can change for two reasons. They can increase or decrease either because the pay of actual workers is going up or down, or because the composition of the employed population has changed."
“If job losses are concentrated in lower-wage professions, then average wages will rise even if the people still employed are not making any more than they were before,” he added.
The average wage of a private-sector worker in Arizona is $36.54, up 4.61% year over year, outpacing inflation. On average, Arizonans work nearly 35 hours a week.
The state’s labor force participation rate continues to decline. Arizona saw the seventh consecutive month of its labor force participation rate dropping to 59.9%, the report said, adding that it is 2.2 percentage points lower than in August 2025.
Milne said it is hard to determine why Arizona’s labor force participation rate is falling because the state doesn't have detailed data, but at the national level, he said labor force participation has declined for people 55 and older.
He said this age group's national labor force participation rate of 32.8% is nearly 3 percentage points lower than its average from 2016 to 2019.
For prime-age workers, ages 25 to 54, Milne said their labor force participation rate of 83.4% is “high historically,” adding that it is 1.2% higher than the average from 2016 to 2019.
Milne said Arizona’s current unemployment rate of 4.9% does not signal a tight labor market.
Arizona’s unemployment rate ties with Washington state for the sixth-highest unemployment rate in America.
Source: “AOL Money”
