Pittsburgh continues to have lower levels of unemployment than most similarly sized cities such as: Indianapolis, Kansas City and Cleveland.
The Steel City weathered the economic crisis of 2008 better than just about any of these cities and its low unemployment and housing prices have drawn residents back to the area. But will this trend continue?
Mark Price, a labor economist with the left-leaning Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, discusses Pittsburgh’s prospects going forward. In particular, he explains that economic recovery has not yet affected those in blue collar jobs.
“Two sectors that are going to be important for Pittsburgh, two sectors that have not performed well at all for obvious reasons would be manufacturing and construction… that reflects the deepness and the nature of the recession.”
Overall, however, Price does feel good about the economy going forward.
“It’s unusual for an economist to be optimistic about things... but I think nationally the last couple of months have been stronger than we’ve seen in a while and so all signs point toward, we’re maybe at a point in this recovery where we’re really going to see some healthy job growth.”
