Arizona Labor Market Monitor

Contents

Summary

Arizona's covered employment stood at 3,159,818 jobs in 2026 Q1, -0.9% (-28,305 jobs) from 2025 Q1 [2]. The employment-weighted average weekly wage across all industries was $1,473, up 4.3% year over year in nominal terms [2]. Weighted by covered employment, county unemployment averaged 5.4% in Jul 2026, +0.6 pp from the same month a year earlier; 15 of 15 counties recorded a higher rate than a year ago [1].

The Workforce Resilience Score (WRS) ranks Arizona's 15 counties on four dimensions: current conditions, wages and industry, shock resilience, and workforce supply. Maricopa County leads this edition with a score of 75 (grade B); Mohave County is lowest at 32 (grade D). Grades are distributed B: 1, C: 8, D: 6. 15 of 15 county grades hold under ±25% perturbation of the dimension weights; 0 are classified as volatile because they sit within a few points of a grade boundary.

Among private-sector industries, health care & social assistance added the most jobs year over year (+3,477, +0.7%), while retail trade recorded the largest decline (-5,646, -1.7%) [2]. The fastest county job growth was in Santa Cruz County (+2.7%); the largest year-over-year rise in unemployment was in Yuma County (+2.1 pp) [1].

Purpose and methodology

This report provides a quarterly assessment of labor market conditions in each of Arizona's 15 counties. It is intended for workforce development boards, economic development organizations, employers, and educational institutions that need a consistent, citable reading of local labor conditions between the release of official annual statistics.

The Workforce Resilience Score is a composite of 11 indicators grouped into four dimensions. Each indicator is oriented so that a higher value indicates a stronger or more resilient labor market, converted to a percentile rank among the 15 counties (0–100), averaged within its dimension, and combined using the dimension weights below. Letter grades are assigned at fixed cut points (A ≥ 80, B ≥ 65, C ≥ 45, D ≥ 30). Because normalization is within-state, the index describes a county's position relative to other Arizona counties, not relative to the nation.

Current conditions — weight 30%

Wages & industry — weight 30%

Shock resilience — weight 25%

Workforce supply — weight 15%

Grade confidence

Every edition re-runs a weight-sensitivity test: 2,000 draws in which each dimension weight is perturbed by up to ±25% and the grade is recomputed. A county whose grade holds in at least 90% of draws is labeled Robust; 70–90% Borderline; below 70% Volatile. Volatile grades are not errors; they identify counties near a cut point whose letter should be read alongside the numeric score.

Vintages in this edition

Statewide labor market conditions

Covered employment across Arizona's counties totaled 3,159,818 in 2026 Q1, a change of -28,305 jobs (-0.9%) from 2025 Q1 [2]. 4 of 15 counties added jobs over the year. Maricopa County accounts for 73% of the state's covered employment, so statewide aggregates largely reflect conditions in the Phoenix metro; the county tables that follow are where the divergence shows.

The employment-weighted average weekly wage was $1,473 in 2026 Q1, up 4.3% from a year earlier before inflation adjustment [2]. Wage levels range from $957 to $2,151 across counties, a spread that reflects industry mix as much as local pay rates for comparable work.

County unemployment rates in Jul 2026 ranged from 3.8% to 18.9% [1]. The employment-weighted average of 5.4% compares with 4.7% in the same month of the prior year. These are not-seasonally-adjusted figures; the July reading in particular is affected by seasonal patterns in agriculture and education, which is why this report compares against the same month a year earlier rather than the prior month.

County rankings: the Workforce Resilience Score

Maricopa County leads on the strength of its current conditions and workforce supply sub-scores. Counties graded D or F in this edition are those with high current unemployment, weak or negative covered-employment growth, and above-average historical volatility; their scores should be read as relative positions within Arizona rather than absolute judgments.

Movers: largest year-over-year changes

Small counties can post large percentage swings on modest absolute changes; a single employer opening or closing moves the rate in counties with fewer than 10,000 covered jobs. Where a mover is a small county, the absolute job figure alongside the percentage is the better guide to significance.

Industry detail

What this index does and does not say

It is a relative ranking within Arizona. Percentile normalization means a county's score describes its standing among the other 14 counties in this edition. A county can improve on every indicator and still lose rank if others improve faster. Scores are not comparable across states or to the national Economic Resiliency Index, which normalizes across all U.S. counties.

Vintages differ by design. Current-conditions indicators are as of Jul 2026; wage and employment indicators are as of 2026 Q1; structural indicators (participation, education, industry mix, age structure) are 2022 ACS 5-year estimates centered on 2020. The structural dimension therefore changes slowly and mostly reorders counties only when a new ACS vintage is adopted, which is noted in the edition's changelog.

Not seasonally adjusted. County LAUS data are not seasonally adjusted; the report uses same-month year-over-year comparisons for that reason. Month-to-month movements are not reported.

Small-area precision. ACS 5-year estimates for the smallest counties carry margins of error large enough that single-year differences are not meaningful; the index uses them only as slow-moving structural context. QCEW cells for sectors with few employers are suppressed by BLS and are excluded, not estimated. Sector totals in Table 3 therefore understate statewide employment in sectors concentrated in small counties.

Wages are nominal and mix-dependent. Average weekly wage reflects the mix of industries and hours as well as pay rates. A county whose wage rises because low-wage seasonal employment fell has not necessarily seen pay increases.

Weights are a judgment. The dimension weights are set by the authors and disclosed in §2. The sensitivity test reports how much each grade depends on them; it does not make the weights correct. Users who prefer a different weighting can recompute the index from the appendix table.

Descriptive, not causal. Nothing in this report estimates the effect of a policy or program. It describes conditions and their changes.

Appendix A: full indicator table

Sources

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS), county series LAUCN{fips}0000000003. https://www.bls.gov/lau/
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), Open Data API. https://www.bls.gov/cew/
3. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2022), Data Profiles DP02/DP03/DP05. https://api.census.gov/data/2022/acs/acs5/profile
4. Alt-30, Economic Resiliency Index v1.0.0, recovery-dynamics dimension. Methodology & Research Brief. https://portal.alt-30.com/resilience

Reproducibility

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