After the steep jobs drop in the brief COVID-19 recession, the number of Pennsylvania nonfarm jobs began to rebound in May 2020. The state surpassed the pre-pandemic jobs levels and added over 1 million jobs by August 2024. The Commonwealth hit a 13-month consecutive record high nonfarm jobs number—6,200,000 jobs—in August 2024.
Figure 1
Since 1990, Pennsylvania’s job growth averaged a bit less than half of national job growth, largely because Pennsylvania has slower growth in the working-age-population than the United States. Since mid-2021, a year-or-so after the pandemic recession, Pennsylvania job growth has been well over half U.S. job growth. In some months, including recently, Pennsylvania job growth has exceeded U.S. job growth. This is despite the fact that the U.S. population (non-institutional civilian) age 16 and over has grown 2.7% in the past three years while this Pennsylvania population has not grown. Pennsylvania’s unusually strong recent job growth relative to the nation may have initially reflected that Pennsylvania lost more jobs in the pandemic and thus had more jobs to recover. Strong recent relative job growth in Pennsylvania could also be an early indication that Pennsylvania is benefiting even more than other states from recent federal investments in infrastructure, climate, and innovation.
Figure 2
Federal investments in the past five years began with two big bipartisan COVID relief bills passed under President Trump. They continued with the American Rescue Plan enacted in March 2021 by Congressional Democrats and signed by President Biden, and they concluded with the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL) (in November 2021), the Inflation Reduction Act (in August 2022), and CHIPS+ innovation bill (also in August 2022).
Figure 3 shows that expansionary fiscal policy, combined initially with low interest rates, resulted in a rapid recovery of jobs after the pandemic recession in April and May of 2020. Pennsylvania jobs surpassed the pre-pandemic level in about 24 months. By comparison, after the Great Recession, it took around 75 months for Pennsylvania to recover to the pre-recession jobs peak. Fiscal policy after the 2010 elections became less expansionary because Republicans regained the majority in the U.S. House and favored spending cuts.
Figure 3
Keystone Research Center released its annual report on the economy “State of Working Pennsylvania 2024” on August 27th. This is the third of a series of blogs focused on smaller, more digestible, pieces of our report. To access the full report, including full references for this specific blog, and other “State of Working Pennsylvania” resources, please visit our 2024 State of Working Pennsylvania Resource page here.