The Little Rock Regional Chamber on Tuesday announced a new record for the number of people employed in the region.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Little Rock Metropolitan Statistical Area reached 380,038 people employed in July. That’s up 4,255 people, or 1.13%, from July 2024. It’s nearly 40,000 higher than January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jay Chesshir, chamber president and CEO, said the chamber’s goal is to get the number of employed to more than 400,000 “as quickly as possible.”
“Our team looks at this number every month,” he said at the event. “If we have more people working here, we’ll have more people living here, we’ll have more people going to school here, we’ll have more people creating new businesses here.”
New construction was also on the rise in Little Rock, with more than $192 million in new construction in the first six months of 2025. That’s a 25% increase from the first six months of 2024, when the number was $153.8 million. New building permits were up 42% from 237 to 337 during the same period.
Little Rock was also identified as one of the fastest-growing economies in the South by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The city ranked second in five-year GDP growth behind Nashville, Tennessee, in an evaluation of peer regional markets including: Memphis; Kansas City, Missouri; Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; Oklahoma City, Tulsa; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Little Rock’s five-year GDP growth was 25.92%.
Chesshir said moving forward, economic development would be focused on three pillars: supporting existing businesses, attracting new companies to grow the economy and fostering an environment where entrepreneurs can create and scale companies.
He also said it is important to tell Little Rock’s story from a marketing perspective, because “no one else is telling that story.” He specifically mentioned the quality of Little Rock’s water, saying it helped the city land a huge project, “and it will help us land a whole lot more.”
Port of Little Rock
The chamber on Tuesday also highlighted the success of the Port of Little Rock. Chesshir said 14 new projects have come to the port since 2020.
“If we go back 10 years, we would have been talking about 14 projects over 10 years, not over five,” Chesshir said.
With recently announced projects like the $150 million Welspun expansion and Elopak’s $95 million project, the port is anticipated to support 11,000 jobs.
Bryan Day, executive director of the Little Rock Port Authority, said that recently-announced projects at the port have an expected economic impact of almost $4 billion.
And Day said the work is “not stopping.” Currently more than $30 million in infrastructure improvements are taking place at the port. Day also said “in the very near future,” the port is going to attract a generational project that will change its trajectory moving forward.
“We are currently looking for opportunities to expand our real estate holdings, because that’s our product,” Day said during the event. “That’s what we have to have to be successful. We are implementing and investing in infrastructure.”
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