BOOM Mississippi! Highest number of jobs ever in the boom belt state
Governor Tate Reeves announced on Friday, August 21, that Mississippi’s total nonfarm employment reached 1,196,200 jobs in July, which his office described as a new all-time high for the state.
The figure is roughly 800 jobs above the 1,195,400 the Governor’s office announced for May on June 23, the previous record it had reported.
“There’s been no shortage of record-breaking economic news for Mississippi over the last six-plus years,” Reeves said in the announcement. “It’s amazing to see what our state is accomplishing and how it’s improving the lives of people across Mississippi.”
Reeves attributed the result to “the people who live here and our economic development efforts,” and said the state had “changed the trajectory” of its economy. “The victories we’re putting up now are going to last for decades,” he said.
The announcement said more than $85 billion in new private sector investment has been announced since Reeves took office in January 2020, and that the six largest economic development projects in state history have been finalized during his term. The same $85 billion figure appeared in the Governor’s May jobs announcement in June; in September 2025 his office was citing $41 billion.
The announcement also said Mississippi ranks second in the country for growth in job openings since 2020, with hiring demand up nearly 20 percent against a U.S. state average of -9.6 percent. It does not name the source of those figures.
The Governor’s office further said the state has recorded an all-time low unemployment rate on more than one occasion during his term, and cited the second-fastest-growing GDP in the United States, second place nationally for household income growth and the fourth-fastest-growing per capita income in America. No time periods were given for any of those rankings.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was scheduled to publish state employment and unemployment figures for July on Friday. At the time of writing, the most recent month in the bureau’s published Mississippi series was June, at 1,192,200 seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs — up 0.4 percent over the year. On the bureau’s current series, the highest previous month was November 2025, at 1,195,000.
Those series are revised. The bureau rebenchmarks state payroll estimates each year, which moves earlier figures: the Governor’s office announced 1,205,500 jobs for August 2025 in September of that year, while the bureau’s current series puts that month at 1,194,500.
Mississippi’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 3.8 percent in June, where it had stood since March. The Mississippi Department of Employment Security put the state’s not-seasonally-adjusted rate for June at 4.2 percent, on nonfarm employment of 1,191,800. The record low the Governor’s office refers to was 2.7 percent, reached in 2024.