- Cost of Doing Business
- Workforce
- Technology
- Polarization
At the top of the show, the U.S. government will release its February Employment Situation report which includes the national unemployment rate. The consensus of economists is that employers will report that they added 180,000 jobs during February with the unemployment rate dipping to 3.9%.
While news that we’ve entered our 101st month of uninterrupted growth, the longest in US history is truly an important milepost, it will likely be the average hourly earnings figure which creates the biggest headlines. The consensus of economists is that wage rates will rise by 3.3%. This is up from the 3.2% rate reported in January and an indication that our on-going labor shortage is pushing salaries upward.
Tomorrow’s economic information will complete this week’s collection of data, that has included the new home sales report (up 3.7%), the building permits approved report (up 3%), and construction spending report (inched up 0.1% from January and 3% since February 2017), as well as the regular economic sector reports.
So, how are we doing?
The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry employment situation report for December 2018, held steady with a statewide unemployment rate of 4.2%. According to the (workstats.dli.pa.gov) county-by-county report, three of our four counties continue to rank statewide among the 10 counties with the lowest unemployment rates: Union at 3.6% (-0.2%), Montour at 3.8% (+0.3), Snyder at 3.9% (no change), and Northumberland at 5.5% (+0.2).
