Region's jobless rate rises to 8.3% in October
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There were 92,400 people who were unemployed in the six counties that make up Pittsburgh's metropolitan statistical area in October, which gave the region a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 8.3 percent.
The state's Department of Labor and Industry reported today that the unemployment rate for October was 2.8 percentage points above where it was in October 2008.
While the region's unemployment overall was still below the state average of 8.8 percent and the national rate of 10.2 percent for the month, there were pockets of the region where unemployment was particularly high. Fayette County had an unemployment rate of 10.6 percent, McKeesport's rate was 10.2 percent, and Armstrong County had a rate of 9.2 percent. Fayette County also was suffering from the highest increase in its unemployment rate over the same month last year, climbing 3.4 percentage points from 7.2 percent last year.
PDFAllegheny County had the lowest unemployment rate in the metropolitan area with unemployment for October at 7.7 percent. Allegheny County, with its heavy employment base of health care and education, has been more insulated from the rising unemployment, seeing an increase of 2.5 percentage points over October 2008.
The local jobless rate for the metropolitan area rose from 8.1 percent in September.
In a separate survey of payroll employment, the state found that there were actually 4,800 more nonfarm jobs in the region in October than there were in September.
Locally colleges and universities employed 2,100 more people in October than they did in September, though they still provided 1,000 fewer jobs than they did in October 2008.
There also was some hiring in retail trade with 1,300 more retail jobs, though that sector, too, was down from October 2008 by 2,800 positions.
Construction and manufacturing continued to shed jobs in October -- 300 in construction and 400 in manufacturing. Those sectors lost 6,000 and 10,500 jobs respectively since October of last year.
While local school boards expanded employment for October over September by 3,800 jobs, there were 700 fewer jobs in local schools than there were in October 2008. Local governments other than schools cut jobs for October by 700 jobs from September, but there were still 100 more workers in October than there were the same month of last year.
Monday marked a turning point for some members of the longtime unemployed. The federal subsidy to help unemployed people with their health insurance payments expired for those who have used it for nine months now.
The subsidies are for what is known as COBRA health insurance payments, which are the payments workers make to stay on their former employers' health insurance plans. The subsidies are available for anyone who was laid off between September 2008 and December 31, 2009, and cover 65 percent of a worker's health insurance premiums. However, those subsidies are available for only nine months.
The act to create the COBRA subsidies was passed in February so that March was the first month that workers would have been covered.
A study by Families USA found that the cost of COBRA nationally eats an average of 83.4 percent of a worker's average monthly unemployment benefits. In Pennsylvania, Families USA found that the COBRA benefit costs an average of 72.8 percent of the average monthly unemployment benefit.
First Published December 2, 2009 12:00 am
