Saturday, June 18, 2011

PA Economy Goes Wrong Way In May

Pennsylvania has been one of the nation's strongest creators of jobs from January 2010 to April 2011, putting Pennsylvania's unemployment rate well below the national rate of 9.1%.

But in May 2011, Pennsylvania lost 14,400 jobs.  The unemployment rate actually also fell from 7.5% to 7.4%, because more people stopped looking for work than jobs were lost.

But Pennsylvania in May went from creating thousands of jobs every month to losing a significant number.  Headlines around the state in May included notices of massive layoffs of teachers and education staff as a result of huge education budget cuts.

As the economists at the Keystone Research Center (www.keystoneresearch.org) said, the May job numbers are a cause for concern.  Keystone also said it would provide further analysis of the May job numbers to understand better where Pennsylvania shed desperately needed jobs.

Hopefully May is a one-month blip and not the start of a trend.

No comments:

Post a Comment