Arizona is expected to add jobs over the next decade at nearly five times the rate of the rest of the nation — much of that to help care for the state's growing population of seniors.
But Maricopa County is projected by the state Office of Economic Opportunity to get more than what might be considered its fair share.
The state will add 477,968 jobs by 2032, new figures Thursday project. That's an annualized growth rate of 1.4%.
By contrast, the national figure for that period is 0.3% growth.
The need for more workers in health care will fuel employment.
"Health care and social assistance has been one of the strongest, most consistent industries in terms of employment growth over the last several decades. And that's only likely to continue," said Doug Walls, labor market information director for the Office of Economic Opportunity.
It comes down to demographics.
Consider, he said, that this year alone nearly 350,000 people nationally are expected to turn 65 each month.
"We're seeing an aging population,'' Walls said. "And with an aging population does tend to come more spending on health care.''
Research shows that nearly half of what people spend in their lifetime on medical expenditures occurs at 65 and older, he said.
In Arizona, that will mean an additional 64,470 new jobs by 2032 in medical offices and clinics, out-patient surgery centers, hospital outpatient departments and dialysis centers. That translates to an annualized growth of 2.9%, more than double the state's overall projected job growth.
Growing even faster, according to the new report, will be the number of people working in nursing homes and residential care facilities.
That sector grew by about 1.7% a year in the past decade. The projections call for a 3.2% annual increase through 2032.
Hospital employment also is expected to accelerate, to a rate of 1.9% a year.
Making these changes even more remarkable is that the state's annual population growth, now at 1.7% a year, is expected to decline to 1.1% annually by 2032.
Construction lags
One sector expected to lag the statewide average job gains is construction employment. Walls said it is expected to grow just 1.2% annually as compared with 5.3% in the prior decade.
He pointed out, however, that rapid growth in the last 10 years has to be considered in the context of what came before, when the industry went into sharp decline as the prior housing boom went bust in the recession in 2008 and 2009.
That cut construction employment in half. Since then, the sector has been getting back to where it was before.
But now, inflation and the cost of borrowing are interfering.
The average interest for a fixed 30-year mortgage is now 7.79%, a figure that hasn't been seen since the beginning of the century, Walls said.
That, in turn, is linked to what has been a decline in residential home sales in the Phoenix metro area — Maricopa and Pinal counties — by nearly 33% in a year.
Phoenix vs. Tucson areas
The new report says the number of jobs created in the state's largest county by 2032 will be 394,411. That is 83% of all the jobs the state will gain.
Yet Maricopa County currently has about 62% of the state population.
By contrast, Pima County, which includes 14.5% of all Arizonans, is expected to add 32,166 jobs, or an average of about 6.7% growth a year.
States are beginning to make plans for an aging population. Veuer’s Keri Lumm has more.
