PIGEON FORGE, Tenn. (WVLT) – A new report from the University of Tennessee showed the state economy is strong and that nearly everyone who wants to work is working.

That report also came with a message about job growth.

Sevier County is one of the areas that’s added not only tourism jobs, but these new high-skilled workforce jobs.

Economists at the Boyd Center just completed a survey that found prices are going down with pay going up with hundreds of new companies bringing thousands of new jobs to Tennessee.

The center found this explosion of economic growth happened over the past five years, creating more jobs than people.

“A lot of them (companies) are coming to Tennessee, because things are great in Tennessee, and that’s putting upward pressure on wages and salaries in our state. And that’s been good because the wage growth has exceeded price growth for most of the distribution,” said Dr. Don Bruce with the University of Tennessee.

The jobs coming are not minimum wage jobs as many of them pay $30 to $50 an hour. Bruce said that creates competition among the employers.

“There’s still a place for every worker in Tennessee. We have tons and tons of openings across the board, but the growth has been on the high, high skill, high intensity jobs that end up paying higher wages and salaries. A lot of companies have been coming to Tennessee and recruiting their workers into Tennessee. That’s the only way we’ve been able to keep up,” said Bruce.

Sevier County added 10s of thousands of jobs over the past five years.

At the county’s largest employer, Dollywood, they too have added thousands of jobs.

“Because we think of ourselves like a small city, so anywhere from administration, HVAC, anything you could possibly think of and those frontline hosts,” said Susan Loveday, Vice President of Human Resources.

Dollywood is in the middle of hiring for the 2025 season with most of last year’s employees coming back for this spring.

“The family atmosphere I think, is what really gets people to stay and we really do care about each other. You see it in our commercials every week when we have a job fair, but it’s real. It’s palpable, just proud to be part of,” said Loveday.

Bruce said going forward, higher pay and perks are all reasons this is an employee’s market for finding the perfect job.

“And Sevier County, for ages, has been really good at making it easier for workers to come in from surrounding counties, not to mention the fact that housing is cheaper and more available. The commutes are a little bit better with infrastructure improvements that they’ve made in Sevier County,” said Bruce.

There are nearly 60,000 jobs available if every person in our state who wants to work, goes to work. The pay is an average of $65,000.

Filling those jobs will require more people to move here, but we’ve all seen how hard it is to find somewhere to live.

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