It is from these high antennae that we will broadcast Money Monday-On The Mark this coming Monday morning, August 7th. The show is now hosted by our long-time friend and even ‘longer-time’ Chamber leader, and Shamokin Dam Mayor, Joe McGranaghan. Aimee Buehner, Chair of your Chamber’s Board of Directors, and I will do our level best to report the big economic data and then explain with a “local so what?” focus the importance of this information to our listening audience from about 8:30 to 9:15 am, or so.
So, this is your invitation to listen in on your radio at 1070AM or via the world wide web at wkok.com to ‘everything local’ with our so-called “just right” economy.
In the meantime, here are the big numbers from today’s US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Economic Situation Report for July, 2023:
- The Labor Force continued to ease with 187,000 new jobs created. This number is slightly lower than economists had predicted, and short of the number of new jobs needed each month to replace the number of people leaving the workforce.
- Unemployment dipped from 3.6% last month to 3.5% this month.
- The Education/Health Services Sector lead all other employment super sectors with 114,000 new jobs created. Other sectors with job gains were Financial Services and Wholesale Trade.
- Participation Rate held steady for the fifth month in a row at 62.6%.
- Wage rate increases continue to slow down as inflation cools off to 0.4% for July, equaling approximately 4.4% for an annual rate. This is the lowest wage rate increase since the beginning of the pandemic.
- Fewer new job openings, dropping to 9.582 million jobs or 1.5 jobs per active applicant. This is the lowest number of job openings since April, 2021.
- July’s data does not indicate any significant impact from weather, particularly hot temperatures, on jobs or the economy.
So, how are we doing?:
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (workstats.dli.pa.gov.dashboards/Pages/Labor-Stats.aspx) county-by-county report, Greater Susquehanna Valley counties each experienced some increase in unemployment rates; however, continuing to be among the lowest in the state as compared to all other counties. Montour dropped from 3.5% to 3.0%, and Union dropped a full half percent to 3.3% and Snyder dropped nearly a whole percent to 3.6%, together these three are part of the ‘bottom dozen’ counties in the state. Our only county continuing to be higher than the statewide average is Northumberland at 4.6%. Pennsylvania’s unemployment experienced an impressive drop to 3.8%. Make like the national Participation Rate our state held steady for the past five months and is currently below the national rate at 62.0%.
