Chester County is about to see its strongest year of job growth since the 2008-2009 recession. Thanks to gains in construction, healthcare and professional services, job growth is about to reach 2 percent, which is the highest percentage for the County since 2000, writes Harold Brubaker for Philly.com.

“Anecdotally, you can look around and see more activity in pharmaceutical investment and more health-related, pharmaceutical-related start-up activity,” said Adam Ozimek, an economist with Moody’s Analytics in West Chester.

Ozimek also expects that investment will help the entire region to exceed its job peak of 1.034 million in 2008, which was decimated by the recession when nearly 50,000 jobs were wiped out over two years.

The rapidly growing healthcare sector is expected to be one of key factors for new jobs, even more so as it is still not growing fast enough to cover the ever increasing need, particularly in social assistance. Services for elderly and the disabled and ambulatory health-care services, such as home care, have seen a surge in demand as an aging population together with the pressure on hospitals to cut costs, are stimulating growth in home health care.

“It’s growing at a faster rate than the economy, the need for home health,” commented J. Mark Baiada, president of Bayada Home Health Care. “Compared to health care in general, it should grow a little faster, I think, because we can take care of people at home less expensively and they want to be there.”

Another area creating new jobs is residential construction, which has lagged behind the rest of economy but is finally starting to recover. While the number of mining, logging, and construction jobs in Chester County is still below its peak of ten years ago, the last two years have seen consistent growth.

Read more about the job creation boost at Philly.com here.