Improving unemployment report for City, County, and Metro (Pittsburgh: employment, construction)

[BrianTH]

PDF available here:

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal...=763797&mode=2

The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for the Metro declined from 8.2 in August to 7.9 in September, continuing the long streak of unemployment rates in the Pittsburgh Metro being below the state rate and even farther below the national rate (it has now been four full years, in fact, that the Pittsburgh Metro rate has been below the national rate).

Allegheny County went down from 7.9 to 7.6. They don't provide seasonally adjusted numbers for the City, but given the unadjusted numbers, it probably declined by a similar amount.

Interestingly, the seasonally-adjusted labor force count for the Metro actually increased. That means there had to be a big enough increase in the seasonally-adjusted employee count to both absorb the increase in the labor force and also reduce the existing number of unemployed.

As for the increase in the labor force, that was true both over last month and over last year. Looking at the unadjusted year-over-year numbers, the Metro labor force was up 4600, which is about 0.38%. That is a decent-sized annual increase--for comparison, the U.S. as a whole was up 0.15%.

Most of that labor force increase was in Allegheny County, 4200, which works out to a 0.66% increase for the County. The City was up 1400, which is a 0.91% increase--that is VERY robust for a single year.

So the growth in the labor force appears to be increasing as you get farther into the core area. Accordingly, that labor force data may have interesting implications for future population and development dynamics in the region, assuming of course that these trends continue (a big assumption to be sure).

[AaronPGH]

Fantastic news!

[rhondee]

Thanks for sharing the good news BrianTh. I'm hoping the increase in labor force results in a net population gain. Maybe we won't wind up being a ghost town after all!

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by rhondee

I'm hoping the increase in labor force results in a net population gain.

Me too. And in theory, you should sooner or later get more people to go along with the new jobseekers (non-working spouses, children, and so on). Of course the challenge is putting those new jobseekers to work, when we are still down in total jobs from before the recession. On the other hand, new people can also create work for others, and in fact year-over-year we saw employment increases in construction, retail, and education/health . . . all areas that would be consistent with population growth contributing to job growth.

Anyway, the labor force started increasing well before the Census this year, so maybe that will have some clues for us about what has been happening.