Unemployment rates by county Jan. 07 to Sept. 09

[pman]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Courtesy of Chris Briem's Null Space blog, here is the state's employment summary for Pittsburgh:

http://www.dli.state.pa.us/landi/lib...pghmesa_pr.pdf

It includes the unemployment rate in the City, but only on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, which was 7.6% as of the October 27 release (the same release reflected in the map I linked). Still, it has been tracking about 0.3-0.5 points above the Allegheny County non-seasonally-adjusted rate, so I think that is good enough for a rough estimate, call it about 7.8-8.0% seasonally adjusted. And that is enough to conclude that Philadelphia County almost certainly has a WAY higher unemployment rate than the City of Pittsburgh.

Philadelphia county is the city of Philadelphia ,has been since the consolidation (1854?). I suspected as much but I wanted to see the numbers. My friends and I joke that the Philadelphia are is the doughnut Pittsburgh is the doughnut hole. what we mean is that Philadelphia is the weak center of an otherwise strong region while pittsburgh is a relatively strong center of an otherwise not so strong region. It's not entirely accurate on the pittsburgh side but not entirely inaccurate either. we also joke that if Pittsburgh had Philly's location it would be a boomtown. OTOH, we're not sure if Philly's location is one reason it's been able to hang on despite being so disastrously run all these years. Pittsburgh, of course, has had it's share of incompetency too, so either they give a little more back or their incompetence is restricted by not having the city of the first class distinction.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Katiana

It is interesting that only about half of that, 5.44% is actual farming. This includes the states of N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, according to the map.

Indeed. There are very few actual farmers left in the United States--but they swing above their weight politically.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Indeed. There are very few actual farmers left in the United States--but they swing above their weight politically.

Well, yes, epecially in states where their numbers reach some critical mass, such as Illinois.

However, the topic is unemployment, and I was just wanting to point out that the low unemployment rate in the Great Plains is not simply because there are a "lot" of farmers there. In fact, in Nebraska, which has the third lowest ue rate in the country, about 65% of people live in the two biggest cities, where they do the same type of work as people everywhere else. Most of the rest are scattered in the smaller cities and towns and are doing non-farm work. North Dakota has a big energy industry going on right now.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Katiana

I was just wanting to point out that the low unemployment rate in the Great Plains is not simply because there are a "lot" of farmers there.

I agree. Really there are several different industries with serious unemployment issues right now, including the housing industry, the auto industry, and so on. Where the unemployment rate is low, you are more looking at places that weren't as caught up in the big unemployment industries, as opposed to necessarily being caught up in some specific other industry (like farming).

In fact as I recall there are still ongoing unemployment issues in farm-related jobs, ones that pre-existed the current recession but haven't gone away. So if anything a lot of farm-related jobs might have moved the numbers the other way from the national average.