Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area Employment – March 2011 (PDF)

Total nonfarm employment for the Pittsburgh, Pa. Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) stood at 1,120,900 in March 2011, up 18,200 or 1.7 percent, over the year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. During the same period, national employment rose 1.0 percent. Sheila Watkins, the Bureau’s regional commissioner, noted that consecutive over-the-year job gains have continued for 11 months in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, almost twice as long as the 6 months the nation has been adding jobs. In addition, local growth rates have exceeded those for the U.S. since the advances began. (See chart 1 and table 1; Technical Note at end of release contains the metropolitan area definition. All data in this release are not seasonally adjusted; accordingly, over-the-year analysis is used throughout.)

In the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, the education and health services supersector gained 5,300 jobs from March 2010 to March 2011, more than any other industry. The 2.2-percent increase was comparable to the 2.1-percent national advance for this industry over the last 12 months. (See chart 2.) In Pittsburgh, over-the-year increases in the education and health services industry have continued uninterrupted since October 1995; nationally, this industry has registered over-the-year job growth stretching back to June 1945 without interruption. As of March 2011, this supersector was the largest industry in the Pittburgh area, employing over one-fifth of the local workforce.

The professional and business services supersector had the second-largest employment increase locally, gaining 4,300 jobs over the last 12-months.  This gain represented a 2.8-percent growth rate. The recent advance was the local industry’s 12th consecutive over-the-year increase. The third largest gain in jobs was in leisure and hospitality, up 3,500 or 3.5 percent. The rate of growth in this supersector was more than double the nationwide increase of 1.6 percent.

Since March 2010, three other industries added from 1,800 to 1,500 jobs in the Pittsburgh area—manufacturing; trade, transportation, and utilities; and mining and logging. Of the three supersectors, only mining and logging had employment growth well above the U.S. average, up 24.2 percent locally versus 11.4 percent nationally.

No industry lost 1,000 jobs or more in the Pittsburgh area from March 2010 to March 2011.

Technical Note

This release presents nonfarm payroll employment estimates from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. The CES survey is a Federal-State cooperative endeavor in which State employment security agencies prepare the data using concepts, definitions, and technical procedures prescribed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Definitions. Employment data refer to persons on establishment payrolls who receive pay for any part of the pay period which includes the 12th of the month. Persons are counted at their place of work rather than at their place of residence; those appearing on more than one payroll are counted on each payroll. Industries are classified on the basis of their principal activity in accordance with the 2007 version of the North American Industry Classification System.

Method of estimation. The employment data are estimated using a "link relative" technique in which a ratio (link relative) of current-month employment to that of the previous month is computed from a sample of establishments reporting for both months. The estimates of employment for the current month are obtained by multiplying the estimates for the previous month by these ratios. Small-domain models are used as the official estimators for approximately 39 percent of CES published series which have insufficient sample for direct sample-based estimates.

Annual revisions. Employment estimates are adjusted annually to a complete count of jobs, called benchmarks, derived principally from tax reports which are submitted by employers who are covered under state unemployment insurance (UI) laws. The benchmark information is used to adjust the monthly estimates between the new benchmark and the preceding one and also to establish the level of employment for the new benchmark month. Thus, the benchmarking process establishes the level of employment, and the sample is used to measure the month-to-month changes in the level for the subsequent months.

Reliability of the estimates. The estimates presented in this release are based on sample survey and administrative data and thus are subject to sampling and other types of errors. Sampling error is a measure of sampling variability—that is, variation that occurs by chance because a sample rather than the entire population is surveyed. Survey data are also subject to nonsampling errors, such as those which can be introduced into the data collection and processing operations. Estimates not directly derived from sample surveys are subject to additional errors resulting from the special estimation processes used. The sums of individual items may not always equal the totals shown in the same tables because of rounding.

Employment estimates. Measures of sampling error for state CES data at the supersector level are available on the BLS Web site at www.bls.gov/sae/790stderr.htm. Information on recent benchmark revisions for states is available at www.bls.gov/sae/.

Area definitions. The substate area data published in this release reflect the standards and definitions established by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, dated December 21, 2009. A detailed list of the geographic definitions is available at http://www.bls.gov/lau/lausmsa.htm.

The Pittsburgh, Pa. Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) includes Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington, and Westmoreland counties in Pennsylvania.

Additional information

Industry employment data for states and metropolitan areas from the CES program are also available in the above-mentioned news releases and from the Internet at (www.bls.gov/sae/).

For personal assistance or further information on the Current Employment Statistics program, as well as other Bureau programs, contact the Mid-Atlantic Information Office at 215-597-3282 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET.