(Bloomberg) -- Metropolitan areas in the Sun Belt, notably Texas, have experienced robust job growth at the expense of the East and West Coasts over the last four years  — highlighting a massive transformation in the US labor market since the pandemic.

Dallas, Phoenix, Austin, Houston and Tampa have employment gains in the hundreds of thousands that help drive local economies while adding to the areas’ tax base, fresh data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show. Employment is up 1.6 million in the top 10 metro areas where job growth has been the strongest.

On the flip side, the number of employed has fallen by more than a million in the 10 areas where employment declines have been the most pronounced over the past four years. Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Chicago have seen the biggest decreases in the number of employed, based on household data.

Some 140 areas among the 396 metros tracked by the BLS had fewer people working in February compared to the same month in 2020, while 256 districts gained workers.

Some 2.3 million more people were working in 30 of the 51 areas with a population of at least a million and where employment had increased. In the 21 large metros with lower employment, 1.1 million fewer people were working.

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