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March 10, 2008
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The U.S. economy shed 101,000 private sector jobs in February. Here are summaries of the bad news by EPI and CEPR.
The Good:
Private sector payrolls in Pennsylvania, which are only current through January, appear so far to have performed somewhat better than the national labor market with the private sector in Pennsylvania adding 3,700 jobs even as the U.S. economy shed 26,000 private sector payroll jobs (Figure 1). The February employment figures for Pennsylvania should be released by March 21st.
The Bad:
In the past as the national economy went so went the Pennsylvania economy. In the 2001 recession as national employment growth slowed and then turned negative so it did in Pennsylvania (Figure 2).
The Ugly:
As Mark Zandi of Economy.com put it, "The economy never got its groove back after the tech bubble burst". Employment growth nationally and in Pennsylvania since the end of the last recession never achieved the levels of growth that prevailed during the later half of the 90s. The result, hourly earnings failed to keep pace with inflation. As food and energy prices surge even as the economy appears to be headed for a recession the stagnation in wages is likely to continue. As of June of 2007, before the housing market melted down taking the U.S. financial system with it, inflation adjusted median wages in Pennsylvania remained 1.1% below their levels in 2001-2002.
Posted by Price at March 10, 2008 11:47 AM