Pennsylvania has been one of the nation's strongest creators of jobs from January 2010 to April 2011, putting Pennsylvania's unemployment rate well below the national rate of 9.1%.
But in May 2011, Pennsylvania lost 14,400 jobs. The unemployment rate actually also fell from 7.5% to 7.4%, because more people stopped looking for work than jobs were lost.
But Pennsylvania in May went from creating thousands of jobs every month to losing a significant number. Headlines around the state in May included notices of massive layoffs of teachers and education staff as a result of huge education budget cuts.
As the economists at the Keystone Research Center (www.keystoneresearch.org) said, the May job numbers are a cause for concern. Keystone also said it would provide further analysis of the May job numbers to understand better where Pennsylvania shed desperately needed jobs.
Hopefully May is a one-month blip and not the start of a trend.
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