Ames Sees Job Loss in Public Sector

Sign up for Ames Patch's free newsletter | Like us on Facebook | Follow us on Twitter

While Ames may ranked among the best places for economic stability in a recent trade magazine, Iowa State University Economist, Peter Orazem said employment in Ames in the first quarter of 2013 was weaker than in 2011 and 2012.

The Ames labor market has continued to expand, Orazem wrote in a recent Ames and Story County Economic Outlook, but the Des Moines metro area outpaced Ames growth for the first time since 2010.

Employment grew by about .6 percent in the last year in Ames, while employment grew by 4.6 percent in the Des Moines area.

Orazem said the slow growth in Ames is due to a loss of jobs in the public sector. About 42 percent of Ames' workforce is employed through the federal, state or local government.

“Given expected weak growth in federal jobs that may counter the strengthening prospects for state budgets, it seems that the private sector will have to grow if we are to continue adding to our payrolls over the next year,” Orazem wrote.

The biggest job loses in Ames were federal jobs. Orazem said. The City of Ames hasn't cut back on the number of full time employees, but has shifted some full time positions across departments within the city, said Orazem who sits on the Ames City Council.


An excerpt from Orazem's report follows below:


Using the preliminary numbers from Iowa Workforce Development for April 2013, we can see that state government jobs are still 2.6 percent below their April 1999 level and unchanged since April 2009, near the trough of the national recession. In contrast, Ames added 7.5 percent to its private sector payrolls since 1999, most of that growth occurring since 2009. The strongest recent growth has occurred in Goods Production (construction and manufacturing).

In the counties surrounding Ames, Boone and Hardin counties lost jobs over the past year. Hamilton county has rebounded very modestly from its large employment reduction related to the closing of its Electrolux plant, but its employment level is still 33 percent behind the level in 2000. Residents of those counties will be increasingly reliant on job growth in Ames to provide jobs within commuting distance until their own economies begin to rebound.

See More
Ames Leading Location in Economic and Job Growth