Growth in the 'Sand States'

Arizona, California, Florida, and Nevada are the states where homeowners enjoyed the most extreme runup in prices—until the subprime crisis sent the whole housing industry into its sharpest contraction in decades. Now these four states, which were most hurt in the real estate collapse over the past five years, are taking the lead in job creation. They added 222,100 jobs from August through December, accounting for 28 percent of the increase in U.S. employment in that period, according to Department of Labor figures. Their strong performance will likely continue, say economists at Moody’s Analytics and IHS Global Insight.