That conclusion is not immediately clear from looking at the data of the last 20 years.
Even as the population has increased from roughly 141,700 people in 2000 to nearly 160,000 now, the total workforce has fallen.
In 2000, there were nearly 101,900 people employed across all industries in the county, according to state data for the second quarter of that year.
The workforce has still not reached its turn-of-the-century peak. The closest it got was when the total number employed surpassed 89,000 in 2019 before falling to roughly 78,200 under the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic this year.
Taylor Dellinger, a data analyst at the Western Piedmont Council of Governments, said the drop is a testament to both the severity of the 2000s recessions in the area and the increasing age of the population.