Keystone Research Center routinely tracks the performance of the PA economy, including in our annual “State of Working Pennsylvania.”
In response to media hunger for the facts on the PA economy—given its status as a swing state—we recently decided to go beyond statewide data. We unveiled a new “PA Economy Resource Page” that leads with county-level data on PA unemployment, jobs, and wages.
What we found on unemployment was astounding, so we’re highlighting it here and sharing the interactive map below.
Before we examined the county numbers, we already knew that Pennsylvania’s statewide unemployment rate has been below the previous record monthly low (4.1%) for 26 months (from July 2022 to August 2024). We also knew that, for over a year now, the PA unemployment rate (3.4% in August 2024) has been humming along below the national unemployment rate (4.1% in September 2024).
Looking at data for PA’s 67 counties, we found that unemployment rates have fallen by as much as 4 percentage points compared to the pre-pandemic rates. We also found a striking geographical pattern. County unemployment rates have fallen the most in rural and western Pennsylvania. Take a look.
Our map tells a powerful story of the strength of the current PA economy for workers. Low unemployment gives workers—individually and collectively—more bargaining power with employers, more ability to win higher pay, better benefits, improved working conditions. With respect to workers’ bargaining power, in fact, this is the best economy for PA workers in half a century. That bargaining power explains why wages adjusted for inflation are rising for almost all groups of workers statewide (middle wage, low-wage, women, Black, Hispanic, even blue-collar workers). Real (inflation-adjusted) wages have also risen since before the pandemic in two thirds of PA counties. Workers’ bargaining power also helps explain the big uptick in union membership in the broad private service sector in PA—from 215,000 to 279,000 in 2023 alone.
If we stay the course with policies that keep unemployment low, support unions, and add in an increase in the minimum wage, workers in more and more counties and demographic groups in Pennsylvania will feel at last that they are sharing in prosperity.