New Data on Pennsylvania’s Economy Still Grim

Contrary to Gov. Rendell’s seemingly rosy interpretation of Pennsylvania latest job numbers, the BLS data hardly inspires confidence. In May (seasonally adjusted data):

• Pennsylvania added 19,000 payroll jobs
• Of these, 14,000 jobs were government jobs
• Based on the household data, there were 8,000 people dropped out of the labor force
• The number unemployed grew by 7,000 (i.e., the household data indicates a loss of 15,000 jobs)
• The unemployment rate grew to 9.1%

Also released today was new data on state personal income growth. This shows Pennsylvania ranked 38th in income growth in the first quarter of 2010, this continues a long trend, in which Pennsylvania ranked 48th in personal income growth from 1991-2009, though PA did better than the national average (or rather, didn’t perform as badly) in 2009.