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West Virginia’s labor force participation rate is 54.5%, last among the fifty states and 8.5 points behind the nation. Here is the part that ought to disarm the partisanship: we have sat at or near the very bottom every year since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the series in 1976.
Through 50 years of Democratic and Republican legislatures and governors, through coal booms and busts, the number has barely moved.
A long-term, bipartisan commitment to raising it may be the highest return investment this state could make. Almost nobody has bothered to quantify the potential return on investment, which is why the Legislature has no idea how much it would be prudent to spend on the programs that would move it.
So, let’s do the math. Target five and a half points, an increase of roughly 75,000 jobs, which would put us near 60%, on par with North Carolina and Tennessee. Assume these new workers earn 70% of our state’s $60,000 average salary, a deliberately conservative $42,000.
This adds $3.2 billion a year in direct earnings which, at a blended effective state income tax rate of 3.6%, yields about $115 million in new income tax. Add the consumer sales tax on what these households buy, the property taxes their housing generates for counties and schools, and the second-round activity their spending supports, and the figure approaches $200 million a year.
For scale, the income tax cut lawmakers implemented for 2026 costs about $125 million annually. Raising workforce participation does not compete with tax relief. At this scale, it pays for it.
Returns that high justify serious investment in what holds people back: chronic health conditions, skills gaps, educational attainment, and childcare that families cannot find or cannot afford.
Some legislators have done this work. Speaker Roger Hanshaw’s House majority built its 2026 session around a “Jobs First, Opportunity Everywhere” agenda, including House Bill 4001 to create TEAM-WV, a nonprofit, non-political economic development corporation modeled on Ohio’s JobsOhio. The House passed it on March 4. It died in Senate Finance without reaching the floor.
Delegate Bob Fehrenbacher of Wood County, a TEAM-WV co-sponsor, also wrote House Bill 4191 to stabilize how childcare providers are reimbursed and to expand the employer childcare tax credit. In one recent WV Chamber survey, 75% of the members surveyed named childcare as their main barrier to attracting and retaining workers.
Only seven legislators voted against it. The governor declined to sign it, and it became law without him.
Fehrenbacher’s House Bill 4192 would have codified Tri-Share, which splits childcare costs among the state, the employer and the family. It died in House Finance without a vote, though lawmakers did appropriate $5 million to expand the program statewide.
That $5 million is a cheap down payment on a far larger return. I'm hopeful the statewide expansion lives up to its potential.
There is also a state income tax fix I've heard few people discussing. Our married-filing-jointly tax brackets are identical to single filers, and the top rate starts at $60,000. So, a second earner who takes that same $42,000 job, in a household where the other spouse earns the state average, pays 73% more state income tax than a single person earning the very same wage. We tax hardest the people we need the most. Widening the joint-filer brackets would fix it.
Fehrenbacher, one of the Legislature’s most effective workforce legislators, lost a Senate primary this year amid what Senate President Randy Smith described as “two factions in the Senate.”
In this year’s election, ask every candidate to name the bill they will sponsor or support to raise our workforce participation rate, and to tell you how they would fund it. The second half of that question matters as much as the first. The House has shown it can pass jobs bills. The Senate has yet to show it will take them up.
David H. McKinley of Wheeling is the founder of Mountaineer Freedom Alliance and an eighth-generation West Virginian. He is the principal owner of McKinley Carter Wealth Services, McKinley Architecture and Engineering, Omni Strategic Technologies, Beyond Marketing, Willow Glen Capital, and McKinley Properties.