By Christopher Briem, on January 29th, 2013
With December data recently out. More and more workers in Pittsburgh, and another new all-time high in the size of the regional labor force. Bigger observation is that the rate of labor force growth here is not slowing down either. In fact, for December it was the largest year over year increase in the region’s labor force in over 15 years:
But the proportion that are are working in the mills is within an insignificant digit of its all-time low. Now down to 7.5% as of December.
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By Christopher Briem, on January 17th, 2013
So if there is any doubt what drives the stats behind this article today: Full home ownership here is nation’s best, it really is pretty simple. Of those who did not leave Pittsburgh, we have not had many folks move around. Likely for many depressed home values prevented the type of equity appreciation that fuels normal real estate markets. That along with the lower number of people who have moved into the region translates to fewer newer mortgages out there. I know that sounds a lot less folksy than we just love our neighborhoods, but it really is hard to dispute.
So what has been true a long time is that Pittsburgh, (city, region, or something in between) has long ranked near the top in the percentage of householders who have lived in their current home the longest period of time. It follows that more folks have paid off their current mortgage as a result. The question is why. Is Pittsburgh an anomaly?
So to check that out, I pulled the data on the median year householders moved into their current homes for each and every MSA in the nation. I am getting 366 total MSAs currently defined. Here is the very low end of that ranking. Johnstown PA has, by this metric, the longest tenured folks who have not moved. Pittsburgh last the longest tenured residents among large metro areas, thus the ranking in the article today. But notice the whole Cleveburgh thing going on? Maybe it is just a greater rust belt pattern. In this bottom 11 list is Altoona, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cumberland, Wheeling, Steubenville-Weirton and Johnstown. We have moved past the rust belt history in lots of ways, but there should be no doubt the impacts linger.
MEDIAN YEAR HOUSEHOLDER MOVED INTO UNIT
2007-2011 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates
| 356 |
Altoona, PA |
1999 |
| 357 |
Barnstable Town, MA |
1999 |
| 358 |
Bay City, MI |
1999 |
| 359 |
Danville, VA |
1999 |
| 360 |
Pittsburgh, PA |
1999 |
| 361 |
Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA |
1999 |
| 362 |
Cumberland, MD-WV |
1998 |
| 363 |
Scranton–Wilkes-Barre, PA |
1998 |
| 364 |
Wheeling, WV-OH |
1998 |
| 365 |
Steubenville-Weirton, OH-WV |
1997 |
| 366 |
Johnstown, PA |
1995 |
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By Christopher Briem, on January 14th, 2013
So if you care about what the (r)evolution in shale gas development means to the economy and have some illusion it is a simple question this is required reading… NYT: Would Exporting the Natural Gas Surplus Help The Economy, or Hurt?
On how bad forecasting energy markets can be. Coalguru: Natural gas prices in US to remain low in 2013
How bad is it for coal these days: Coal Loses Crown As King Of Power Generation
By Christopher Briem, on January 9th, 2013
Of note in Bloomberg today: ”…Pittsburgh, where rents are at their highest in more than a decade.” Anyone have the underlying report?
In itself the writeup is curious in what it omits, but it raises the spectre of a bigger conundrum. Most benchmarking of cost of living differences between regions mostly come down to housing costs. Similarly, real estate costs are a big part of business costs. So does this all mean Pittsburgh’s advantage in cheaper real estate has its days numbered?
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By Christopher Briem, on January 7th, 2013
OK… this is for labor force wonks only.
So if you read the official press release on the monthly dump of labor force statistics, a headline the state points out is that the count of total unemployed in the region dropped by 2,000 between October and November, and that was the largest monthly drop since May of 1999! A meme some of the media picked up on.
Well… sort of. If you look back in the news, there were plenty of months were unemployment drops of 2K or much more were reported. But that data has all been revised and virtually all larger month over month changes were dampened down (which begs a question, what would the 2K unemployment drop have been under the old data?) So it all depends how you look at it.
Some may recall that the state recently switched the method of seasonal adjustment for this data. I went into that in some detail earlier. Basically, the state stopped applying their own seasonal adjustment, and instead standardized on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. OK. No problem. They also did what is a good analytical thing and switched their historical data to reflect the new adjustment, even though it was different from what was reported at the time. OK as well. They did that ‘backcasting’ all the way back to January of 2000 which is what the BLS was providing.
Soo… is the current unemployment drop the biggest since 1999? Basically you have apples and oranges. The new seasonal adjustment clearly smooths out a lot of month over month variability than in the past. So ove the last decade there were plenty of months where unemployment dropped by 2,000 or more in the region. But with the seasonal adjustment they went away. No surprise that the last big jump was in data from the earlier decade, which reflects the older seasonal adjustment that allowed for bigger monthly jumps in the data. How different are the new vs. old seasonal adjustments? Just compare what the time series looks like before and after January 2000. Lot’s of variation just gone per this graphic of whatis nominally supposed to be consistent data looking backwards. Note the whole time series is for seasonally adjusted data. But there is no need for my highlighting to show where the seasonaly adjustment algorithms differ. Two pretty different realities.
And this is not a story of a decade ago vs. now. The data that was coming out earlier last year was really the older data. Lots of contemporeanous month by month analysis of that data over the decade would actually be very different if the data now being reported was used. Basically a lot of apparent ‘news’ at the time just got wiped away by the new data.
So the punchline? Know your data. Goes beyond repeating a number.
For some simpler punditry. Employment and Labor Force for Pittsburgh are again hitting new all-time highs in November. I will always argue to look at trends more than the monthly numbers for the reasons above and more. So it turns out this is the 7th straight month in a row the region has hit a new all-time labor force peak. I think we can begin to talk about it well beyond any monthly variation. Not that there has been a single mention of the factoid (all time peak labor force in Pittsburgh) by anyone. Odd.
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By Christopher Briem, on December 28th, 2012
Some may have read the article today in the PG on women in Pittsburgh’s labor force. It references a report we did some years ago on gender wage differences in the Pittsburgh region. Note the story today does not mention the third author Susan Hansen as well for the record. No matter how you parse it, I have been saying for some time (page 3 of this* for example) that the trend in female labor force participation is one of the keys to understanding economic transformation in Pittsburgh.
So how bad was it for women working in Pittsburgh in the past. Earlier in the week I quoted a sentence from a 1946 study that said Pittsburgh would…. “slowly decline unless new industries employing women and those engaged in the production of consumer goods are attracted to the area.”
Think about that date for a minute. 1946 was not a period when there was a lot of thought given to gender issues in the labor force. The women who had entered the workforce to fill crucial shortages during the war were being laid off en masse as men returned from service. Things must have been acutely different here for that thought to even come to mind. Labor force participation for women, particularly married women and even more so married women with children were all far below what was typical elsewhere in the nation and would remain so for decades to come.
But play forward several decades. So much that the media went to court to keep segregating job ads by gender long after most of the country has ceased the practice. In Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a local ordinance that prohibited publishing job advertisements that sorted positions into “Help Wanted: Male” and “Help Wanted: Female.” Think about it. 1973 is not the stone age, yet the Pittsburgh Press at the time was willing to spend money to appeal the ruling against them all the way to the supreme court to advertise some jobs for women and others for men. Only in the last couple of years would they even concede the minimal disclaimer I pasted in the image above…. and I will bet you that was only put into print on the advice of their attorneys.
Plenty of folks working today had entered the labor force by then. Was the training and education system here set up for women to compete with men? It was worse than that. It was well into the 20th century that a lot of large employers in the Pittsburgh region would not as policy employ married women with children.
* Note also the sentence of population trends for the region turning positive in 10-15 years. That was early in 2002, which means my forecasts were really from 2001. I think we may have hit that window pretty closely.
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By Christopher Briem, on December 26th, 2012
So yes, you may think I would most want to self reference this piece in the PG: For Pittsburgh a future not reliant on steel was unthinkable … and unavoidable
But no, the more important thing to read is on the “Next Page” and the idea of bringing rapid transit to Cranberry. See: Go North. Light Rail. Who would’ve thunk that? Crazy idea bringing transit to the fastest growing part of the region and all.
Of course, this has been a theme here in the past. I mentioned the idea of “Rapid transit to Cranberry” even this last just in October in: Pod or Bust for me. (or as far back as 2008 in: G20 Thoughts and More). Seriously, the idea is self-evident except I suppose to those who want to see transit wither into oblivion.
Oh.. yes. I know. Silly to divert resources even thinking about something that will never happen when there are so many other pressing transit issues in town. Must be why the bureaucracies supported Maglev for so long. Something the public knew full well was never going to happen. Support, mind you, that lasted right up until the virtually undeniable end that only came early this year.
You know.. we really do maintain a certain economic motif here.
and just for the record. For those who continue to read ink these days, I have absolutely nothing to do with the placement of advertisements near my piece today on the inside page.
By Christopher Briem, on December 10th, 2012
If you doubt the world is flat, there is now clearly a direct link between the economic Ch’i of both Canonsburg and Rajasthan:
Wall Street Journal this morning: For Guar Gum, a Bubble Goes Pop
Followed up this evening on Marketplace: How fracking affects a bean grown in India
By Christopher Briem, on November 30th, 2012
So if you want to see the gloomiest picture of Downtown used in an upbeat story see today’s headine.
Reuters: Only three major U.S. cities see economic recovery: study
What 3 you have to ask? Lots of ink on this one from all over, but nary a mention locally? Even reverb over the pond of the story. Curious. Maybe the reference to ‘Brookings’ got confused with the bigger news today here about ‘Brooks Brothers.‘
By Christopher Briem, on November 28th, 2012
Boring unemployment news today… or is it. Another jump in Pittsburgh’s labor force. See interactive graph for more. Pittsburgh MSA labor force +26K year over year through October. Works out to +2.1% or more than double US labor force growth (+1%) over the same period.
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