Economics
County With More Cows Than People Leads U.S. Labor Market
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More cows than people live in northern Colorado’s Weld County, yet this wind-swept prairie led the nation’s big counties in job growth thanks to agricultural production coupled with an energy boom.
A new cheese plant, along with oil and gas drilling and wind turbine manufacturing, boosted employment in the county 7.5 percent in the year ended March 2014, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the 339 counties with the most jobs. It was the second consecutive top ranking for the largely rural, 4,000-square-mile county, which had a 6 percent gain in December 2013 from a year earlier.