The latest round of QCEW data was just released by the Employment Department and it confirms the recent good news in the Salem labor market (see the monthly reports by regional economist Pat O’Connor). Job growth has picked up nicely in the state capitol and the local private sector is now adding jobs at a strong rate based on recent history. Today’s job growth rates match those seen during the peak of the housing boom and you have to go back to the early 1990s to see higher, sustained rates.
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With that being said, the region is still digging out from the Great Recession and is not back to pre-recession levels of jobs yet. This brings us to the Bonus Graph of the Week which shows that the private sector in the state capitol has regained a little more than half of their recessionary losses, while the local public sector* is beginning to stabilize (year-over-year changes just slightly negative in 2013).
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*Just a reminder that this includes city, county and state government for both education (K-12, community college) and non-education workers.
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