for December 4, 2023
“All I know about money matters is that money matters.”
For this week’s show: Money Matters Monday-On The Mark, we focused on a year-end wrap up. There wasn't a call-in guest for this show, so Chamber Board Chair, Aimee Buehner of the Bowen Agency and I interacted with the show’s host, Joe McGranaghan. Click here to listen to the recording.
The December US Employment Situation Report doesn’t come out until tomorrow morning. However, this week is packed with economic and jobs related data that listeners will want to track. For example, just as Monday's show wrapped up, Factory Orders for October were released. An example of other reports this week were Job Openings on Tuesday, ADP’s preliminary jobs numbers on Wednesday, Initial Jobless Claims on Thursday, and then the big data on Friday with the Employment Situation Report. Also on Friday afternoon, the all-important Consumer Sentiment Report will be released. This report may give us an early indicator of how well end-of-year shopping might go this year.
The Chamber’s Communications and Technology Committee coordinates the annual Innovations Summit. This Summit, being held the morning of December 15th, is attracting many of the Chamber’s technology-based companies and consultants. The stated purpose of the Summit is to scan for cutting edge and emerging technologies and to develop ideas and plans for how organizations in the Greater Susquehanna Valley can adopt, embrace, and prepare for these new approaches and this year’s focus is Artificial Intelligence.
So, how are we doing
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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 returned to their historic low unemployment rates, continuing to be among the lowest in the state as compared to all other counties. Montour and Union dipped again this month with Montour at 2.9%, and Union down to 3.0% with Montour tied with four other counties at 3rd lowest in the state behind Chester 2.6% and Cumberland 2.7%. Snyder stabilized at 3.6% and Northumberland dropped a full half point to 4.2%. Pennsylvania’s unemployment was down to 3.5%. Our state’s Participation Rate dipped slightly to 61.9% with a national Participation Rate of 62.7%. Both rates are below the long-term national participation rate of 62.84%.
