Harrisburg, May 1: Following this morning’s release of the Pennsylvania March Employment Situation report, along with data revisions included in the February report, Keystone Research Center economist Maisum Murtaza released the following statement:
“This morning, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry released its preliminary employment situation report for March 2026. The overall March report was stronger than expected, but those gains were partly offset due to the losses shown in the February report. With the March and February state reports now released, Pennsylvania’s employment data have caught up with the nationally released statistics. While gaining 12,500 jobs since February 2026, over the last three months, Pennsylvania is actually down by 8,000 jobs after the January revisions (January 2026 to March 2026).
Job gains over the last month were concentrated primarily in Trade, Transportation, and Utilities sector (5,100 job increase) followed by Education and Health, which increased by 4,600 jobs over the last month. Both Manufacturing and Government employment have continued to see a cumulative decrease in employment since the start of 2025. Manufacturing has lost 5,500 jobs and the Government sector has lost 8,200 since January 2025.
Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate remained at 4.2% in March, keeping it just slightly below the national rate of 4.3%. Nationally, unemployment rate decreased slightly though the Economic Policy Institute states this is for the “wrong reasons as labor force participation and employment-to-population ratio have also decreased nationally.
Black and Hispanic workers continue to experience significantly elevated unemployment rates reversing much of the progress brought on by the consistent low unemployment Pennsylvania experienced from 2022 to the end of 2024. During July 2023, unemployment rate for Black workers in the state hit a low of 3.8% which has since risen to 7.2%. Similarly, Hispanic workers had an unemployment rate of 5.8% in the same month which has since increased to 8.4% in March 2026. It should also be said that the impacts from increased national political instability are not yet reflected in the data on a national or state level.”