A long climb to get out of a big unemployment hole
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When the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases March unemployment statistics on Friday, economists will be looking to see if the trend toward recovery is reflected in the latest numbers.
February's numbers showed that the nation experienced a net job loss of 36,000, with the unemployment rate hovering for a second month at 9.7 percent. The unemployment rate rose in Pennsylvania in February by a tenth of a percentage point to 8.9 percent, while the state had a net loss of 16,000 jobs.
That does not mean Pennsylvania accounted for 44 percent of the national jobs lost, said Troy Thompson, the spokesman for the state's Department of Labor and Industry. Instead, when all the many states' job gains and losses were added together, the net loss nationwide was 36,000. Virginia, for instance, lost 32,600 jobs, Michigan lost 16,000 and Florida gained 26,300.
"It's the gains minus the losses, and whatever is left over is what we wind up with," Mr. Thompson said. "This is a one-month snapshot of our employment situation."
Taken as a snapshot, the month included some potentially frightening news. For instance, the education and health sector in the state lost 7,800 jobs, although it was still up 6,200 jobs from a year ago.
Mr. Thompson said the same sort of one-month loss in education and health care occurred in October, only to see a rebound the next month.
That sort of bumpiness in the numbers is the same reason no one was celebrating the potentially good news that manufacturing in the state had gained 1,600 jobs in February.
Mark Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, agreed it is the trends that matter. Right now, the trend is one of slowing job losses and maybe even a slight gain, as the national unemployment rate has dropped from its high for this recession of 10.1 percent in October 2009.
"We're trending up [toward adding jobs]," he said, "but way too slowly."
In order for the labor market to absorb the natural gains in the working population from college and high school graduations as well as people moving into the labor force for other reasons, such as their children hitting school age, the nation needs to add about 150,000 new jobs a month.
First Published April 1, 2010 12:00 am
