Kansas City Jobs Review

Kansas City has always been a economy.kansascity.com/?q=node/439">major Midwest hub for manufacturing, warehousing, and transportation.  In recent moths it has seen some massive job cuts but has remained relatively economically strong and currently has an unemployment rate of just above 7%, which is better than the national average.  Kansas City is home to quite a diverse mix of employment sectors, all of which have shown losses over the past two years.  Even the government sector has shed a few thousand jobs.

It’s little wonder that Kansas City’s manufacturing base has been hit quite hard by the recession.  The Hallmark Corporation has its headquarters in the city and most of the printing and manufacturing of its products goes on here.  That company alone has cut more than 3,000 jobs.  Manufacturing in Kansas City has lost about 15% of its total jobs while other sectors have reported losses less severe.  Even the business and finance sectors have reported losses both on the Kansas and Missouri sides of the city.  This is testament to the fact that the recession is crossing all barriers, both state and tax wise, and that even though the two states have different tax codes and unemployment benefits, they are both suffering equally as much. 

The economy of Kansas City, one of the heavyweights of the Midwest for over a century is relatively diversified.  But this diversification is not helping to bolster economic growth or even helping to keep jobs in and around Kansas City secure.  The industries that Kansas City is heavily invested in have taken some of the worst hits of any industries in America since 2007.  Even Kansas City’s famous banking industry has taken a small but substantial hit during this recession.

The Kansas City Business Journal has published quite a few articles addressing employment issues in the city.  The published statistics follow a similar pattern in many cities that have a diverse manufacturing-based economy.  According to one article, unemployment claims have decreased by nearly 3,000 claims in one month alone.  This may be due to the strengthening of the local economy or it may have more to do with the fact that people are running out of unemployment benefits because of the lapsing of those benefits.

Interestingly, Kansas City’s unemployment rates are also reflecting something quite unique in this nation’s history.  The fact that more men are becoming unemployed than women is creating a workforce that has now become filled with more women than men.  For the first time in US history, there are more women working than men.  Kansas City is an excellent example of this.  In the past 12 months, more than 3 times the number of men than women will have applied for unemployment.  Also, there are now officially more women than men in the Kansas City workforce, and this trend shows no sign of reversing as long as the recession continues.

It’s not that Kansas City is not an economically diverse place, it’s the fact that its diversity is in the wrong industries.  The city will likely recover with the rest of the country but certainly won’t be one of the nation’s hotbeds for exponential growth and industry innovation for the foreseeable future.