Employers slow hiring in August

Pittsburgh-area companies having difficulty with increasingly tight labor market

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh region’s unemployment rate remained at 4 percent in August, near the 11-year low it has hovered around for the past four months.

For workers, falling unemployment has meant more leverage in finding jobs and — slowly but surely — better pay. For employers, it has meant an intensifying call for more job applicants, reaching into populations it had not looked at before, including ex-offenders coming out of prison.

Even with new efforts to track down potential employees, the monthly jobs report for the region, released Tuesday by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, showed that hiring managers are being forced to slow down.

Annual job growth around Pittsburgh slipped to 0.7 percent in August, with employers adding about 8,000 positions since August 2017. Job creation is at its lowest level in at least the last year, averaging 1.3 percent growth per month.

The unemployment rate has dropped by 1 percentage point over the last year, an indication of the region’s strengthening economy and a tightening workforce but also the pressure coming from a wave of retirements and declining population.

In August, the labor force shrunk by 13,500 over the year, which means 13,500 fewer people were employed or looking for work. A declining labor force has long been a concern of