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Just don't tell that to folks looking for work in Lancaster County.
The jobless rate here crept to its highest level in more than 26 years, to 7.4 percent in July, a new report shows.
That's up from June's 7.3 percent.
Nearly 20,000 people are out of work here, according to the state Department of Labor & Industry report.
"Things are still continuing to get worse," said Ryan Horner, an analyst with the state's Center for Workforce Information & Analysis.
Lancaster County lost another 600 jobs in July, the 14th consecutive monthly decline. That brings the total jobs lost since last year at this time to 10,600, or 4.4 percent.
"I'm really not sure that we have hit our peak," Horner said. "I suspect that both locally, as well as statewide and nationally, we are going to show several more months of increases."
Unemployment tends to continue rising until well after a recession ends. That's because businesses generally won't hire until they see a clear upturn in orders.
With economists expecting the recession to last until the end of the year, that means a recovery in employment could happen sometime in 2010.
The 7.4 percent unemployment rate here is the highest since April of 1983, when it was 7.7 percent.
Still, the rate of job losses is slowing.
"If you look back to earlier this year, we lost 1,700 jobs from January to February, and we lost 2,400 jobs from February to March," Horner said. "Unfortunately, we are still posting seasonally adjusted losses. But the losses are not nearly as severe."
And Lancaster County fared better than most of the state and nation.
The national unemployment rate is 9.4 percent, down slightly from a month earlier. Statewide, the rate is 8.5 percent, up a tenth of a point from June.
Among the 14 metropolitan areas in Pennsylvania, Lancaster County tied with Altoona for the third-lowest rate. It trailed State College (5.8 percent) and Lebanon (6.9 percent), and matched Harrisburg.
Erie has the highest unemployment rate, at 9.7 percent.
The statewide rate for July was 8.5 percent, up from 8.3 percent in June; the national rate was 9.4 percent, down from 9.5 percent.
The local rate was the result of the county having 19,900 people without work and 248,400 with jobs — a drop of 2,500 since June, the state report shows.
Though the change from June to July was moderate, the change from a year earlier — before the recession hit — was staggering.
Lancaster County had a jobless rate of 4.2 percent in July 2008, as about half as many county residents (11,500) were without work then compared to now.
Between then and now, numerous employment categories have been ravaged, with hundreds or thousands of jobs disappearing.
The manufacturing sector, for instance, lost 300 jobs in July, and 3,500 jobs over the past year, a decline of 8.5 percent.
Business and professional services has dropped 2,100.
The leisure and hospitality sector has fallen 1,300, despite adding 200 jobs in July. The construction, mining and logging sector has lost 1,300. Retail trade has lost 1,300.
A rare bright spot over the past year has been health care and social assistance. It has added 800 jobs.
On another bright note, the Labor & Industry report said it expects job levels to rebound this fall in transportation, warehousing, utilities and local government as school bus drivers, cafeteria workers and related staff return to work.
E-mail: tmurse@lnpnews.com
