Responding to the unexpectedly strong jobs report last Friday morning, economists dug deep into their dictionaries and thesaurus, to come up with precise words they needed to describe what they just heard. They also sought to recover from the embarrassment of being so far off target on their pre-release predictions.
The big numbers for the February Employment Situation Report, better known as simply the unemployment rate, were 517,000 new jobs created in January with a 3.4% national unemployment rate. On the first Friday of each month, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics releases this closely watched report. As a bit of a sport, economists almost always, make predictions of what the report will say. Frankly, the Employment Situation Report is overemphasized by nearly everyone, including your Chamber of Commerce.
But, like most gross statistics, following this report closely month after month, year after year can be very illustrative when trying to understand our local economy and what the Chamber can do to take advantage of these trends on behalf of our members. A more accurate measure of local economic happenings is your Chamber’s biennial survey of members.
The findings from this report, which we can laser into a specific zip code, when necessary, create the basis of our strategic plan for its biennial ‘tune up.’ Surprising to no one is that this year’s ‘big concern’ is our valley’s workforce. While some improvement in the long worrisome ‘skills gap’ appeared in this survey, a newer and potentially more troubling concern has emerged.
Simply stated, Chamber members in overwhelming numbers indicate that “we can’t find workers!” In other words, after significant wage increases and generous additions to benefit packages, there just aren’t enough people to apply for the jobs which currently exist.
One approach that your Chamber is taking in tackling this emergent issue is to encourage, endorse, inspire, promote the ‘Makers Movement’ here in our valley. Good progress is being made on this front already, but there’s still plenty of room for growth. We believe that one of the best ways to keep young, bright, motivated valley-raised people here is to help them see the wisdom of ‘sticking around.’
Our objective is to the extent possible curate a connection between artisans, crafters designers, and makers of all kinds and the people who would like to support them through their purchases and commissions.
We celebrate a constellation of three events which together underscore the motivation behind makers. Saturday, February 11th is National Inventors Day. It also happens to be International Women-Girls in Science Day. Then later this month, starting on February 19th is National Engineers Week. The theme of this week-long salute to engineers of all disciplines is “Creating the Future!”
If nothing else, a drive across that big, beautiful Central Susquehanna Valley Thruway bridge across the Susquehanna River, with its majestic views would be a wonderful way to celebrate all the while experiencing firsthand how engineers are creating our valley’s future.
Jobs Report Strong/Makers Needed
