Gavin de Gruiter
October 30, 2022.
Table 1. Employment in Lamar County. BEA. BEA Interactive Data Application.
Lamar County's economy has many different job sectors that employ the population, but about two-thirds of the number of jobs come from the top seven job sectors in the county.
Lamar County's total number of jobs is twenty-nine thousand and thirty-two. Lamar County does not have a big industrial manufacturing economy, there are only three hundred and eighty-five manufacturing jobs in total. Instead, Lamar County focuses on other types of jobs. The farm employment is also small, only three hundred and eighty-six jobs. This is because Lamar County farms are usually just small family farms. The largest job sector is retail trade. This employs about fifty-three hundred people. Grocery stores like Ramey's and other retail stores supply the population with their daily needs, and this is the biggest job sector in the county. One reason retail could be the largest job sector is because of the city of Hattiesburg. Hattiesburg jobs draw much of the population of Lamar County, and industries other than retail would set up business in the city. The second largest sector is healthcare, and the third largest sector is accommodation and food services. Places like the hospital in Purvis provide healthcare jobs. It is obvious why the food service provides many jobs. Each town or major area in Lamar County has a number of fast food and restaurants since cities like Hattiesburg could be twenty-to-forty-minute drives. Lamar County is not a break-of-bulk transport area. It does not have any major shipping traffic from trains, and no traffic from boats. Some other large sectors are government jobs, construction, finance/insurance, and real estate. There are a lot of government jobs in Lamar County. Places like courthouses, police forces, post offices bring in these jobs. Building or repairing houses, roads, and bridges bring a large number of jobs here. The smallest job sector in Lamar County is the mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sector with one hundred and sixty-four jobs. There are not any large deposits like coal or natural gas to be extracted here in Lamar County, although there are some salt domes in Baxterville (which the U.S. detonated underground nukes in during tests in the 60s).
Even though Lamar County is small and is largely rural, it still has globalization. The retail sector, which is the largest job sector in the county, has products from around the world. There are some local stores that sell local products, but the majority of the stores such as Ramey's or the clothing stores would not have products or foods made or grown locally. The most common jobs to find and make a living off of here are the government jobs, healthcare, construction, real estate, finance, insurance, retail, and food service. Many people in Lamar County commute to Hattiesburg for work.
Lamar County has a few job sectors which dominate the employment numbers, about one-third of the job sectors listed make up about two-thirds of the county's jobs, but there are many opportunities and job sectors to go into, including all the jobs in Hattiesburg.
BEA. BEA Interactive Data Application. Accessed October 30, 2022.
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