Buffalo Employment Rising

'Presuming unemployed Buffalonians haven't moved to the Carolinas to join the growing ranks of unemployed there....'

Don't think of moving to LosAngeles, either. The situation here is quite grim.

You seem to intentionally divide private and public sector jobs instead of focusing on the reason why these fragmented places are "recovering" quicker is because the biggest employers, when you consider private v. public, is the public. Pittsburgh (now to a lesser extent and getting way better), Buffalo and Rochester are some of the most public sector heavy employment regions in the country.

The picture is not rosy here. We continue to be bloated and inefficicent on the govt side, which keeps taxes through the roof, and therefore hurts the private side job creation.

So it's easy to try and spin this into good news, but in a year or two, Buffalo will return to its rightful places amoung metros with the highest unemployment rates and the places struggling right now will return to growth and properity.

Read: Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century. It outlines why some regions are perpetual winners and some are perpetual losers due to regional planning for housing, economic development, education, and transportation.

And today's story in the Buffalo News about regional 911 gives you an idea of the chronic, malignent myopia impacting this region.

These numbers don't distinguish between full-time and part-time jobs, which is a significant bit of information. A job is a job, but someone who pulled in $70,000/year before being laid off and now makes $23,000 because their only option was retail or a supermarket (an extreme but not unrealistic example) would really show what the job market is like.
Also, I'm pretty sure the numbers take into account the amount of people who stopped looking for jobs (which excludes them from being classified as unemployed) But that's always the case when you are giving out unemployment numbers. The current US unemployment rate is 9.5%, if everyone who's out of a job, including those who aren't looking, were included; we'd probably be well into the teens.
Finally, If they want a more accurate assessment of the health of each city's job market, look into the amount of people who applied for welfare/food stamps over last year or look into the amount of people who filed for bankruptcy protection.

I don't think I'm wrong in wanting more details... am I?

I looked at the website that is referenced, and it doesn't look like Buffalo employment is going up yet,

We are better "ranked" compared to unemployment rates of other areas. That's good. But unless I am misreading the data, we aren't gaining net jobs yet.

Can someone explain?

Hey, if anyone knows where I can get me one of those jobs, please drop me a line!

From Business First last month:

http://buffalo.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2009/09/14/daily45.html

For the Buffalo area, unemployment surged from a year ago as the August 2008 rate was 5.8 percent. In the year-over-year period, the region, consisting of Erie and Niagara counties, lost 12,400 private-sector jobs, or 2.7 percent. The non-farm job loss was 13,800, or 2.5 percent.

“Our latest labor market report indicates that employers in New York state cut jobs at a more modest pace than employers nationwide and our statewide unemployment rate remained below the nation’s rate. However, the number of unemployed New Yorkers in August reached its highest recorded level,” said a statement from Peter Neenan, Ph.D., Director of the Division of Research and Statistics.

If you want to compare historical data in Buffalo against historical data from other regions, you're better off using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Website, which has official data.

http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ny_buffalo_msa.htm

"In a piece that calls the market dismal, one can't help but notice that some of the hardest-hit post-industrial areas are some of the first places to recover (Rochester, Buffalo, Pittsburgh)."

What does that sentence mean? In what way is Buffalo among the first to "recover"? What defition of recovery are you using?

"development Mecas".

Mecas?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecca

A little bit misleading if you ask me.

Public employment is much different than Private employment. While Buffalo has gained jobs, most of these jobs are being paid for by the workers in the region who stayed.

Would you consider all of the additions that Albany has made a net gain? Didn't think so.

While some regions have had massive layoffs in the private sector, they still have a NET gain in the last 5 years. I think anyone looking at the numbers would rather have 80k jobs added over 5 years with a loss of 57k with a net gain of 23k v. little to no growth at all and having less loss.

This is just as foolish as the Buffalo is better off for missing the housing boom argument.

Some of these jobs will return in markets like Charlotte. Others will move to other areas to find work. There is no legacy costs for private sector. However, for every job added in the public sector, there are huge legacy costs.

It will be interesting to see if some of the high growth low cost metros can ever recover from this kind of downturn. They have built their low cost model on the back of constant growth and astronomical real estate value increases.

Now that the spigot is shut down they will possibly need to raise taxes. On top of that these places were built cheaply and will not age well. Can aging sprawl with higher taxes hold the appeal to its relatively new population? Is there anything to hold a person in Phoenix when they lose their job and family is 800 miles away? Only time will tell.

It's also helpful to distinguish between structural and cyclical unemployment. Although our region, and others hard hit by the collapse of American industry, has low cyclical unemployment (the type that will ease relatively soon and will fluctuate with macroeconomic cycles) our structural unemployment (the type that is long-term and doesn't correlate with macroeconomic fluctuations) is among the highest in the country. When the global economy improves, cyclical unemployment will ease, but structural unemployment (caused by excessive taxes, inadequate infrastructure, a workforce whose skills are incongruent with emerging industries, among other reasons) rate will remain high. Our economic performance relative to other metropolitan areas should not be misinterpreted as a positive sign. It takes quite the optimist to claim that reduced volatility during a recession is a good reason not to grow for the last several decades.

This is going to be a very slow economic recovery. There will be massive structural unemployment, and it won't end until we reform the American education system. The industries of the future will emerge where the most skilled workers are--and, unfortunately, that's not us by a long shot. After healthcare (but before global warming), this needs to be at the top of the national agenda. Otherwise, we will (very soon) cease to be the world's preeminent player in the global market place.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/04/as-layoffs-persist-good-j_n_309232.html

It's pretty grim everywhere at the moment. This story is really nothing more than poorly written fluff that has no statistics attached to it. When the economy does pick up steam down the road, which cities will have the desirable jobs? The Medical Corrider is Buffalo's best bet at the moment for future profesional job growth, along with UB's 2020. Bass Pro and Embassy Suites will not be a draw to get people to move back looking for work, that type of job [or any service type employment] can be found anywhere, and even those are scarce at this time.

So if I have three jobs, do I count three times?

Well, I can only go on my experience. I left Buffalo in 2000 for the Carolinas. I was laid off from my job in july of 08 and was laid-off for 8 months. I am very easily relocated (few geographic preferences, no wife, no kids, no house to sell). I had more interviews in Buffalo than any other city, and all were good paying jobs ($55,000+). Granted, I wasn't offered the positions, but when I tried to move home in 2004 - not one interview and couldn't find an opening anywhere.

Before anyone believes the hype in ISciWNY they might want to see if there are actually any jobs available. As an underemployed science major in Buffalo, I can assure that the pickings are slim to none. This crap is nothing but UB hype trying to justify the hundreds of millions they have spent on an ill-conceived attempt to compete with San Francisco, Boston and San Diego.

Buffalo took the pain over the last 40 years: the de-industrialization, the disinvestment, and the abandonment as money flowed away from the Rust Belt to the Las Vegases and Phoenixes. Now we are on different turf: our core economy meshes more closely with what's left of the U.S. economy. Health care, banking, distribution, and yes, government which shed 56,000 jobs last month nationwide ( in answer to those who cynically believe that government only ever grows and increases) all play a much larger role in Buffalo than in so many of the boom-bust cities that led in employment growth over the last decade. And unlike them, Buffalo is not at overcapacity so new growth should be evident here sooner. The key is lending and that's where Buffalo's conservative financial institutions might underserve this recovery.

Complain, moan, try to debunk, say it's all lies, say it's wrong, say we still suck all you want.

The bottom line which no one can refute is that all the cities were compared using the same data set and no matter what you think it's still better to be number 35 than to be number 77.