Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent in September, down 2.3 percentage points from August, but it remains higher than the national unemployment rate of 7.9 percent.
Numbers from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (L&I) show the Keystone State’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percentage points higher than in September 2019, and the national unemployment rate was up 4.4 points over a year ago. The Pennsylvania unemployment rate reached 16.1 percent in April amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The unemployment count in Pennsylvania fell by 141,000, and employment rose by 194,000. Simultaneously, the Keystone State’s civilian labor force, which is the estimated number of Pennsylvanians working or looking to find work, increased 52,000 over the month.
Total nonfarm jobs were up 19,400 over the month, and the past five months, the state recovered 54.2 percent of the total nonfarm jobs it lost in March and April. However, over the past year, total nonfarm jobs in Pennsylvania were down 470,800.
The leisure & hospitality sector saw the most significant decline over the past 12 months, with a loss of 147,300 jobs.
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The unemployment rate in Bucks County in August, the last month that county-level data was available, had an unemployment rate of 9.7 percent, a decrease from 15 percent in April.
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