As we reported on Monday, new jobs data for September were not encouraging with payrolls in Pennsylvania falling 9,600 jobs over the month.
According to data for all the states released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm payroll employment increased in 39 states.
Based on this data, Pennsylvania’s rank for percent job growth since January 2011 has fallen to last place among all 50 states.
Today’s numbers drive home emphatically that you can’t cut your way to prosperity.
We were ranked in the top 10 for job growth in 2010.
Then, tens of thousands of layoffs in education and the state’s postponed investment in infrastructure and delayed acceptance of Medicaid expansion dollars delivered a body blow to Pennsylvania’s recovery, the effects of which are still being felt.
In recession and recovery, Pennsylvania needs a balanced, creative policy and state budget approach that fuels the state’s economic engine, not an unbalanced one that slams on the brakes.
Here are the details on how we ranked the jobs data. http://keystoneresearch.org/sites/default/files/KRC_JobRanking_Sept.pdf
Read The State of Working Pennsylvania 2014 (at http://keystoneresearch.org/state-working-pennsylvania-2014) for our complete examination of recent trends in economic data in Pennsylvania.