A mismatch between jobs, skills
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It's now been more than three years since the national recession began, and although job losses bottomed out two years ago, unemployment remains high and there are growing concerns that we're facing a "double-dip" recession.
If you look at the statistics on jobs, the Pittsburgh region looks as if it's doing pretty well. After losing more than 35,000 jobs during the recession (July 2008 to July 2009), the region has added 27,800 jobs over the past two years (July 2009 to July 2011) -- we've gained back about 80 percent of the total number of jobs we lost during the recession.
Although that's been a slow recovery, it's actually better than most regions. Over the past two years, we've had the ninth highest rate of job growth of any of the 40 largest regions in the country. In contrast, seven major regions, including places like Atlanta, Indianapolis and Kansas City, have continued to lose jobs in each of the last two years.
But if you look at the statistics on unemployment, you see a very different picture.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate here in July was 7.4 percent, hardly changed from the 7.6 percent rate in July 2009 when job losses were near their peak. There are still more than 92,000 southwestern Pennsylvanians who are unemployed, 27,000 more than before the recession started.
If the region has been adding thousands of new jobs, why has unemployment remained so stubbornly high?
A major reason is that we have not been creating jobs in the same sectors where we lost them. During the recession, our biggest losses were in manufacturing (11,600 net jobs lost just in the 12 months between July 2008 and July 2009), in professional and business services (8,900 jobs lost), in construction (6,100 jobs lost) and in retail (3,900 jobs lost).
Since then, the professional and business services sector has restored all of the 8,900 jobs it lost, but only 2,100 manufacturing jobs have been added (18 percent of the total number lost during the recession), only 1,400 retail jobs have been created (36 percent of the total number lost), and there has been no net gain at all in construction jobs since 2009.
First Published September 4, 2011 12:00 am
