A new report said Wichita lost more workers than any other U.S. city in the past year, though government data suggests the area’s workforce grew in nearly the same time frame.
For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Wichita, 280 left the city between August 2017 and August 2018, business networking site LinkedIn said in a report Tuesday. It based the report on members who changed the location of their profile during those 12 months.
A LinkedIn official would not say how many members the site has in Wichita; it has 150 million members in the United States. Jeremy Hill, director of Wichita State University’s Center for Economic Development and Business Research, said it’s true that not too long ago the Wichita area was shedding jobs — between July 2016 and April 2018.
“During this same period of time, the U.S. economy was adding jobs every month,” Hill said. “Since the relative labor market was not as strong here, there was a clear incentive for those unemployed to look for jobs in other markets.”
But he doesn’t think that’s the case any longer.
“Our tone has changed quite a bit from the past few years.”
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