Kansas Governor Laura Kelly said the state has reached its highest employment level in history. The Kansas Department of Labor said employment was at an all-time high in 2023, with nine of the top ten employment months taking place throughout the year. The tenth top employment month was in 2022.
Kansas has a labor force of just over 1.5 million workers, with more than 1.4 million participating in the workforce. That is above the national average.
Governor Kelly said hard-working Kansans have been the force behind the state’s strong economic growth. She said the goal now is to recruit more people to move to the state and get more Kansans into the workforce in order to keep up with the job opportunities being created statewide.
The Department of Labor said the Kansas unemployment rate has been at or below 5 percent, which many economists consider full employment, for the past 38 months.
