Nebraska Employment and Education

Unemployment is very low in Nebraska. In 2006, the rate is 3.2%, down from last year’s rate of 3.8%. There were 13,000 new jobs created last year and earnings are up in the state 2% from last year. The largest business sector in the area is farm production. Some of Nebraska’s largest earnings come from beef, pork, corn, and soybean production. Because of its location, Nebraska has become a large freight transportation hub. This has led to major improvements in Nebraska’s roads and highways, and their extensive rail system. Nebraska has also seen a rise in businesses such as manufacturing, telecommunications, information technology, food processing, tourism, fertilizer, oil and natural gas production, and insurance. Here are some of the companies who are based out of Nebraska: Omaha Steaks, TD Ameritrade, the Union Pacific Railroad and Mutual of Omaha.

Nebraska Education

Nationwide testing has shown that Nebraska’s schools are some of the best in the nation. Students in 4th and 8th grade tested higher than the nation’s average in every single section of the NAEP test (math, reading, writing, and science). The state has 1,256 schools and the state spends $8,456 on each student for their educational needs. The student per teacher ration was in at around 13 students per teacher. Nebraska has also implanted a classroom assessment system organized in order to help teacher’s know what students need to spend more time working on. The NAEP scores showed that the percentage of students who could achieve basic or above levels in math and writing were especially high. Fourth grade students tested in at 80% proficiency and 8th grade students tested in at 75% in 2005. Their writing tests showed 87% of 4th graders 88% of 8th graders at or above basic levels.