Area job losses slighty less in June over May (Pittsburgh: places to live, vs.)

[bradjl2009]

Here's the link Pittsburgh's Future. Maybe we are seeing a little light at the end of the tunnel. The job numbers should be interesting for all metros in July as the stimulus spending is going up more now that it's the summer.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

A Little Good News, At Last

If you’ve been wishing for a little good economic news, the Pittsburgh Region got some in June. After four straight months of accelerating job losses from January through May, jobs actually improved by a small amount in June. The metro area’s 12 month job losses now stand at 31,200 (a 2.7% loss between June 2008 and June 2009) vs. 32,000 last month (a 2.8% loss from May 2008 and May 2009). (Note that these are twelve-month changes, not one-month changes. Due to seasonal factors, the number of jobs ALWAYS increases from May to June. However, if that May-to-June increase is smaller than in other years, it means that jobs have been lost, and if it’s bigger, it means that jobs have been gained. This year, the increase in jobs from May to June was bigger than it was last year, both in absolute and percentage terms, which means that job losses measured on an annual basis were smaller.)

[BrianTH]

As I recall, in the last recession Pittsburgh started off doing a bit better than the national trend, but then fell behind as the national trend recovered faster. So it would definitely be nice if this time we stayed above the national trend through the whole cycle.

[bradjl2009]

I posted another graph from the same posting on the Charlotte forum and got the typical Sunbelt response after one sentence. Someone doesn't know why our population is falling entirely.

Wow, the guy who runs that blog has a thing for Charlotte...in a negative way, LOL. There are a lot of Charlotte references on there!!

Pittsburgh has been rated one of the top places to live for quite some time now, particularly because of its econonmy. There's just one problem...nobody wants to live there. Its one of the few metro areas, not cities, but metro areas that has a declining population. And its projected to continue to decline through 2025. Charlotte is struggling through this recession, but its prospects for the future are much greater than Pittsburgh's. That city has a much larger problem it can't seem to get a handle on.

[BrianTH]

Generally there is not much point in arguing with people who just want to bash Pittsburgh and have no real understanding of the area, its history, and its prospects, and aren't interested in learning.

But if you want a handy statistic on population, I always think it is worth noting that the Census-defined urbanized area of Pittsburgh (basically the City and closer suburbs) actually grew in population from 1990 to 2000 (and very likely will grow again from 2000 to 2010). Where the Pittsburgh metro area has been losing population is in the rural parts and the farther away small towns--which may be bad for some of those areas, but that has very little to do with the long term viability of the core urbanized area.

[bradjl2009]

After I mentioned this stuff they somehow found more one to three year old graphs for our population prospects and another brought out the race card for our population problems.