Pittsburgh jobless rate dips slightly to 12.5% in June

The Pittsburgh region’s jobless rate dropped again in June, falling slightly to 12.5%, because of an increase in nonfarm jobs, the state said Tuesday.

The unemployment rate fell by 1.4 percentage points, continuing a decline from a high of 17% in April for Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties, according to the state’s Center for Workforce Information and Analysis.

The unemployment rate dropped because the economy added 53,000 nonfarm jobs in June, rising to 1.08 million, and the ranks of the unemployed shrunk by 20,600 to 145,00, down from 200,000 in April, said Lauren Riegel, an analyst for the workforce center.

“We are seeing things moving in a positive direction. We are seeing widespread jobs gains,” Riegel said, as the economy opens up from the covid-19 restrictions.

“The jobs are coming back, but we are a long way to a recovery,” said Frank Gamrat, executive director of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, a Castle Shannon-based think tank. “This (recession) will have long-lasting scars.”

Economist Risa Kumazawa, an associate professor of economics at Duquesne University, also is anticipating “a slow rebound as the coronavirus numbers are getting higher.”

Of those people who returned to work, the biggest job increase in any sector of the region’s economy came from the leisure and hospitality — restaurants, taverns, hotels and motels — which was hard hit by the closures in March, April and May. That sector added 16,600 jobs in June to rise to 81,900 jobs, as some restrictions on operations were lifted. Still, that was almost 45,000 fewer jobs than in June 2019.

The fact that 33,000 people dropped out of the labor force raises concerns, said Chris Briem, a regional economist with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research. Briem said he could not speculate on why they stopped looking for work, but the region’s labor force has lost 40,000 workers since June 2019.

Gamrat said he believed the reason workers dropped out of the labor force in June was the feeling they could not find any jobs “in a pretty nasty job market.”

“It’s more likely they are waiting this thing out,” Gamrat said.