Regional Insights: Pittsburgh has a long way to go before recovery
Share with others:
Now that the U.S. economy is slowly beginning to add jobs again, how is the Pittsburgh region faring?
Although it's still early in the recovery process, the signs so far indicate that we are doing better than most regions. However, we still have a long way to go, particularly in one key sector of our economy, and we need to work hard to make sure that unemployed residents of the region aren't left behind.
Between February 2010 (when jobs nationally bottomed out) and June, the Pittsburgh region has added 46,700 jobs. Although tens of thousands of jobs are added every spring due to normal seasonal hiring, the growth rate this spring was the highest the region has seen in the past 20 years. Moreover, the rate of job growth here was 60 percent higher than the U.S. as a whole, and it was the fourth highest among the top 40 regions.
Because the Pittsburgh region lost fewer jobs during the recession than other regions, even average growth during the recovery will keep us ahead of the rest, and the above average growth we've been experiencing will further widen our lead.
What has contributed to our strong recovery? The leisure and hospitality sector contributed more than one-third of the new jobs this spring (16,100) and the construction sector added almost one-fourth of the jobs (11,500); both of those increases are typical seasonal increases experienced in previous years, but are welcome nonetheless. The third largest contributor was administrative and support services (which includes a diversity of jobs ranging from telemarketing to janitorial services and landscaping to temporary employment), which added more than 6,000 jobs. And fourth was the retail sector, which added 5,500 jobs, the biggest spring growth in the past two decades.
The Pittsburgh region's growth in all four of those sectors ranked between third and seventh best among the 40 largest regions in the country. Another strong performer was the natural resources and mining sector; although it only added 500 jobs, that was more than any region other than Houston, likely reflecting the impact of Marcellus Shale drilling.
The biggest area of concern is the manufacturing sector. Manufacturers in the Pittsburgh region added only 500 jobs in the spring; although that's good news after almost two straight years of job losses, it's only a small fraction of the 14,000 manufacturing jobs we lost during the recession. Moreover, the rate of job growth in manufacturing here this spring was the 15th worst among the top 40 regions. In contrast, Cleveland added more than 5,000 manufacturing jobs this spring, and both Cincinnati and St. Louis added nearly 4,000 manufacturing jobs.
First Published August 1, 2010 12:00 am
