Finding Employment in Philadelphia
Due to the overwhelmingly negative news, many Philadelphia jobseekers may seem some what discouraged. Employers such as Starbucks, General Motors and American Airlines have recently announced that they would be making significant cuts to the number of individuals they employee in the area. There has also been a decline in the number of manufacturing jobs both throughout the city and statewide. Despite this, there are still industries in the area that are not economizing their workforce.
The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that there are several areas that are actually increasing the number of people they employ. Industries that have experienced notable Philadelphia job growth include; information services, education and health services and natural resources, mining and construction.
The industry that experienced the greatest increase in jobs was Information services, which includes media and telecommunications. Employers in this field increased the number of new positions by 4.8 percent when compared to last year. According to Senior Economic Analyst Timothy Schiller with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, most of these new jobs were generated by Comcast.
Employers in the fields of education and health services increased the number of jobs they provide by 2 percent.
“More people [are] going back to school, staying in school longer, delaying entering the job market,” said Schiller. He went on to note that employment at trade schools and other post-high school educational environments have found it necessary to increase the number of individuals they employee to keep up with student’s demands.
“Health services clearly is a growing industry because you have an aging population, and as technology comes up with more and more treatment services, they need more workers. No prospect of that turning around,” he said in explanation of increased healthcare employment.
Phil Hopkins, vice president and director of research at Select Greater Philadelphia, which is a business marking organization that is affiliated with the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, says that these two fields are less likely to be effected by the recession than many other industries. He believes that education and health services provide the area with “a pretty steady anchor.”
Although not creating a significant number of new Philadelphia jobs, industries that remained relatively stable included professional and business services, leisure and hospitality and financial activities. At the same time the number of government jobs decreased by 2.5 percent and manufacturing saw a decline of 3.2 percent.
Overall, Hopkins believes that Philadelphia is more stable than many other parts of the nation. “Looking at employment growth and unemployment rate, we’ve tended to be above U.S. economy,” he said. He believes this can be attributed the diversity of the local economy.