By Chris Comisac
Bureau Chief
Capitolwire
HARRISBURG (Dec. 22) – The Keystone State hasn’t seen its unemployment rate, or employment figures, this good in quite a while.
November’s employment news for Pennsylvania, released Friday, was an early Christmas present: on the strength of more employment (up 27,000) and fewer people on the unemployed rolls (down 22,000), the state’s unemployment rate dropped 0.3 percentage points to a more-than-six-year low, 5.1 percent (the national rate is 5.8 percent). Household employment hasn’t been as high as it was last month (6,045,000) since Jan. 2009, when it was 6,027,813. And the last time the state’s total number of unemployed was lower than it was in November (323,000) was May 2008 (324,295), when the state’s unemployment rate was 5 percent (the last time it was lower than Pennsylvania’s current unemployment rate).
The civilian labor force – those working or looking for work – continued to improve last month, however slightly, increasing to 6,368,000 last month. It has been higher during the last four years, but its high-water mark was 6,484,171 in November 2008 … so the state still has a long way to go (it needs to add more than 116,000 to get back to that total) to recoup what it lost due to the recession.
Reacting to the latest employment figures, presumptive House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, said the positive direction was due to efforts by the Legislature to improve Pennsylvania’s business climate.
“Our legislative policies of budgeting responsibly and reforming our business tax structure; passing lawsuit abuse reform; rebuilding and modernizing our infrastructure through a combination of private-sector dollars and public funds; enacting regulatory reforms; and much more have yielded results,” said Turzai in a press release. “Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate has been slashed to 5.1 percent, and, while we still have more work to do, the vast majority of Pennsylvanians seeking jobs are getting them. It’s great news for Pennsylvania, and something of which all members of the House and Senate should be proud.”
The work to be done was evidenced in a separate jobs survey of employers.
The survey found positive, but not very positive (only a 200-job improvement over October, and only a 0.6-percent improvement over last year at this time), results with regard to jobs.
Legislative Democrats and Gov.-elect Tom Wolf have been critical of what they have characterized as Pennsylvania’s inability to create jobs at what they consider to be an appropriate rate during the last four years.
Earlier this month, citing a statistic that compares and ranks Pennsylvania against other states with regard to the percentage growth in jobs, Senate Appropriations Committee Minority Chairman Vince Hughes, D-Philadelphia, said, “The cause of the problem is simple: Over the past four years Republicans failed to articulate and implement a jobs plan that makes growing our economy a priority. Going from ninth to dead last among all states in job creation in four years demonstrates how little attention has been paid to the actual state of Pennsylvania’s economy.”
Last month, goods-producing industries helped the state stay in positive territory, with the mining and logging (100 jobs), construction (2,600 jobs) and manufacturing (2,100 jobs) all adding positions.
The service industries were split between being up and down, with those that were down being pretty down.
Those industries losing jobs in November were in financial activities (2,500 jobs), education and health services (1,900), professional and business services (900) and other services (2,200).
Improvements last month were experienced in the information (1,200 jobs); leisure and hospitality (600); trade, transportation and utilities (500) and government (300).
Pennsylvania employers last month reported a total of 5,798,300 seasonally-adjusted nonfarm jobs. The last time that total was higher was in Sept. 2008 (5,801,700), while the highest that total has ever gotten for the commonwealth was in April 2008, when it reached 5,824,300.
Since January 2011, the state has added 133,400 jobs (between Jan. 2010 and Jan. 2011, the state lost 85,500 jobs, and 159,400 jobs were lost between April 2008 and Jan. 2011).
There was a bit of lull in job creation during the middle part of the last four years (46,100 total during 2012 and 2013), but since Jan. 2014, the state has added 41,000, which is still a bit shy of the 2011 total of 46,300, but seems to be picking up compared to 2012 and 2013.
For the three years prior to 2007 (2007 was the first year to be impacted by the economic slowdown that would become the Great Recession), the state was creating, on average, slightly less than 59,000 jobs per year, but with a smaller labor pool (about 100,000 persons less annually, on average) than currently exists.
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