It did not take long for Brooke Whoolery, one of Pittsburgh's newest residents, to replace her unemployment check with a paycheck.
Whoolery, 20, a former student at California University of Pennsylvania, landed a job a few weeks ago, working as a canvasser in the Pittsburgh office of Working America, a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO labor organization.
Over the 12-month period from August 2004 to August of this year, some 9,800 workers like Whoolery living in the seven-county Pittsburgh region found jobs, according to statistics released by the state Monday. The 12-month job gain for residential employment was the largest gain since August 2001. The figure takes into account the region's workers who travel outside the area for a job, the state said.
Many of those workers with new jobs -- like Whoolery -- came from the unemployment rolls, said Michele Hiester, an industry and business analyst for the state's Center for Workforce Information and Analysis.
"The key indicators are starting to show economic improvement in the Pittsburgh region. This is a definite trend that the economy is on the upswing. We want to see the residential work force increasing, more people finding work and the unemployment dropping, " Hiester said yesterday.
The state also said yesterday that the Pittsburgh region's unemployment rate dipped in August to 5.3 percent, a half percentage point drop from the jobless rate of 5.8 percent in August 2004. Employment in the Pittsburgh region, however, declined over the last month counted -- from 1,153,600 in July to 1,149,600 in August. The region's labor force -- counting employed and unemployed workers -- lost 7,000 workers last month, falling to 1.213 million. The number of unemployed workers declined by 2,800 to 63,700 in August.
The seven-county Pittsburgh region includes Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties.
Whoolery was living in Fairchance, Fayette County, in June when she was laid off from her waitress job at 30 East Main, the Uniontown restaurant owned by Maggie Hardy Magerko, president of 84 Lumber Co., based in Washington County.
"It was hard to find jobs because everyone was home from school (college)," Whoolery said yesterday.
At the suggestion of her father, an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, she applied for and landed a job a few weeks ago as a neighborhood canvasser for Working America.
August saw notable gains in the healthcare and social assistance, retail trade, professional and business services, private education, and accommodation and food services areas, said state analyst Hiester.
"A lot of the gains we have seen for the last 12 months have countered reductions in manufacturing and construction," said Hiester.
The recovery could be fueled at least somewhat by foreign-owned firms with an investment in the region, such as Sony Corp., Bayer and Westinghouse Corp., said Matthew Marlin, an economics professor at the Duquesne University's A.J. Palumbo School of Business.
"A lot of the foreign investment creates jobs, and it doesn't get the media play," Marlin said.
