“West Virginia has tended to lag the nation along a lot of metrics,” said West Virginia University economist John Deskins.

According to data published by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce in its 2025 “Campaign for Jobs Digest,” West Virginia has had the third-lowest rate of job growth over the last 10 years.

But Deskins said it’s “still a good sign that we’re growing.”

“There are good things happening here. But we need to accelerate that growth what it already is growing and expand out geographically,” he said, noting that only 20 counties have seen recent growth.

“We need growth in the other 35 counties that are basically just doing nothing,” Deskins said.

West Virginia’s unemployment rate in August was 3.8%, while nationally 4.3% of job seekers were without employment. Although it remains below the national average, West Virginia’s unemployment did slightly tick up in August.

“That slight rise in unemployment may very well be a good thing,” Deskins said, as for the past several years since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment has been “unusually” and “persistently low.”

“When COVID hit, a lot of people left the labor force: they went back to be a stay-at-home parent, they went back to school, they went out of the workforce to retire early. And ever since COVID, we’ve seen some of those people come back into the workforce. That has mostly finished nationally, but West Virginia has been a little bit behind,” Deskins said.

“So, I’m not surprised that we’re seeing that because if more of those people who left the workforce before are coming back into the workforce, and if they don’t find jobs immediately, that will lead to a rise in the measured unemployment rate. But that’s actually a good thing that now that they’ve started to look for work again.”

It is possible that West Virginia’s unemployment may be lower than the national average due to the rate of local residents that receive entitlement transfers from the federal government.

“If you’re receiving disability assistance from the government or retirement assistance from the government, then you’re not counted as unemployed. And if more people (are covered by) the social safety net, that can cause the unemployment rate to fall,” Deskins said.

In 2022, West Virginia had the highest rate of government transfer dependency at 28.9%, while the national average was 17.6%, according to the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization. This means in 2022, nearly a third of all West Virginians received transfers from the federal government.

Sean O’Leary, who serves as the senior policy analyst for the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy, said he has not seen any data to suggest a higher rate of government transfers has resulted in a lower measured unemployment rate.

“It’s mainly a demographic thing. We have a high level of transfers because we have a high number of seniors in the state,” he said. “We right there with the national average when it comes to unemployment.”

West Virginian homes increased in value by 3.3% year-over-year, which was outpaced by the national average, which saw a growth rate of 3.8%.

According to the Chamber’s 2025 “Campaign for Jobs Digest,” West Virginia has the 46th-lowest 25-year housing price appreciation rate.

“For so many parts of West Virginia, housing has just been extremely slow or stagnant for a long time,” Deskins said.

Deskins has before called West Virginia’s affordability an indicator of weak economic performance.