The State of Working West Virginia 2025 is the 18th edition of an annual series that examines West Virginia’s economy through the lens of its workers–the people whose labor powers the state and our economy. While each year’s report has a different focus, examining data on topics such as employment, income, racial and gender disparities, job quality, and overall economic performance, one consistent theme is answering this simple question: How are the people doing the work faring? This year’s report focuses on the state of the public sector of West Virginia’s workforce.
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West Virginia has had a relatively robust recovery from 2020’s pandemic recession, due in large part to the $12 billion in federal relief funds that flowed into the state, bolstering the state budget and providing some form of financial assistance to nearly every West Virginian.
However, as that federal aid was pulled back, recovery in West Virginia has weakened, and multiple rounds of tax cuts over the past two decades have failed to deliver promised economic growth. West Virginia ranked near the bottom in several important economic indicators in 2024, including job growth and wages.
Approximately 151,000 workers are employed by the public sector in West Virginia, including federal, state, and local governments. While West Virginia’s public sector as a share of the total workforce is larger than in most other states, public employee pay in the Mountain State ranks near the bottom, particularly for teachers.
The public sector is an important source of jobs at the local level, with county boards of education often among the top employers in a given county. Further, the public sector is an important source of jobs for women in the state, with 59 percent of public sector jobs filled by women.
