This Labor Day finds workers facing some tough realities: Jobs continue to disappear despite a continuing economic recovery; employers are pushing more of their rising health-care costs onto employees; and wages are barely keeping pace with inflation.

In the six-county Pittsburgh metropolitan area, businesses through the first seven months were on pace to shed more than 13,000 workers this year, according to preliminary figures from the state Department of Labor and Industry for Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

Absent a dramatic year-end upturn or revision in the employment data, the losses would eclipse a dismal 2002 when regional employers shed 12,000 jobs and would mark the worst two-year slam to local workers since the collapse of the region's steel industries in the 1980s.

The job loss has cut across industries new and old -- hurting blue-collar and white-collar workers alike, including those with advanced technical skills. Senior management -- let's call them gold-collar workers -- have not been immune.

"This has been a multicolored job loss, blue-, white- and even gold-collar," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group, Downtown. "In terms of who has been hard hit, both blue- and white-collar, in management and outside, have found their jobs cut back or merged out."

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit economic think tank, estimates that there are three unemployed people on average for every job opening across the country -- a situation that leaves many job-seekers playing an unwinnable game of musical chairs.

"For too many working families, the current recovery is indistinguishable from the recession,'' Jared Bernstein, a senior economist with the labor-supported think tank, said in a report prepared for Labor Day.

Rising health-care costs are pushing employers to require their employees to pay more toward their health insurance premiums and pick up more out-of-pocket costs through higher co-payments and deductibles when they see a doctor, go to a hospital or fill a prescription.

"The increases have been in the double digits for the last several years but this is the year that it has probably hit a high-water mark'' of 15 to 20 percent for large employers in Pittsburgh, said Daniel O'Malley, head of the health and welfare practice in the local office of Towers Perrin, a management and human resources consulting firm. "It's coming at a time when the companies can least afford it -- the economy being down and costs up."

At the same time, pay in general appears to slow growing. Average hourly earnings of production workers in Pittsburgh for example, fell from $16.20 in June to $16.09 in July. "Pay is not escalating across the board as it did in the past,'' O'Malley said. "There are merit increases out there but pay is down."

Even though job loss continues, analysts with the state note that the Pittsburgh region apparently hit its peak of unemployment in February, when the jobless rate reached 6.3 percent. By July, the rate had fallen to 5.6 percent, well below the national rate of 6.2 percent.

"That could be a good sign,'' state labor market analyst Michelle Hiester said. "I'm certainly hopeful that we have hit the peak. But it will take a good many months before we are sure of that."

The reasons for the decline in the local rate suggest the local economy is stagnating, not growing, said Hoffman, the PNC economist. He noted that the region's labor force -- those working or actively looking for work -- has been shrinking faster than employment has declined, causing the local jobless rate to fall but indicating that people who don't have a job have either stopped looking or moved away.

Not all is grim however.

American productivity -- one of the best measures of economic well-being -- is rising as workers and their employers do more with less. Over time, rising productivity tends to generate higher incomes for workers and more opportunities for employment.

"The productivity of the American worker has never been better. They're better trained, better educated, better equipped, some might say better motivated, both carrot and stick, and we are seeing economic growth,'' Hoffman said.

"In the short term, there's no question that jobs are leaving and going overseas. But over a long period of time, these productivity strides make America on average a more prosperous economy and a world leader."

A preliminary report from the U.S. Commerce Department last week indicates that overall economic growth in the second quarter was significantly more robust than previously thought. And a growing number of economists expect that growth will pick up even more in this year's second half, perhaps reaching as high as 5 percent -- enough to start cranking up the American jobs machine.

Locally, manufacturers say they continue to need skilled workers like welders and machinists, said Silvio Baretta, a researcher with Duquesne University's Center for Competitive Workforce Development who is completing a biannual survey of local manufacturers.

Despite overall job loss in manufacturing, he estimates 1,200 positions remain unfilled in nine southwestern Pennsylvania counties. His best guess, he said, is that unskilled workers are bearing the brunt of the contraction.

"The good news is that it's not any worse than it was six months ago,'' Baretta said. "It looks like we have hit bottom."