{"id":281334,"date":"2026-09-08T09:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T09:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/281334\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T09:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T09:20:16","slug":"state-unemployment-rate-falls-below-4-for-the-first-time-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/281334\/","title":{"rendered":"State unemployment rate falls below 4% for the first time in years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pennsylvania entered Labor Day with unemployment below 4%, outperforming the national rate. <\/p>\n<p>PENNSYLVANIA, USA \u2014 Pennsylvania\u2019s unemployment rate fell to 3.9% in July for the first time since October 2024, indicating the state\u2019s economy is on the rise.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s awesome; that\u2019s beautiful; it fills me with hope that things are looking up,\u201d said Brooke Guddat, with <a href=\"https:\/\/brookezook.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Brooke Zook Art.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think that\u2019s good that we have low unemployment; it means we have nice job creation in the state,\u201d commented Philip Richardson, a small business owner.<\/p>\n<p>                                            &#13;<br \/>\n                                                <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fox43.com\/assets\/shared-images\/icons\/arrow-circle-down.svg\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                                            &#13;<br \/>\n                                                This story continues below.&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Roughly 147,000 more people are employed now compared to a year ago, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pa.gov\/agencies\/dli\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Richardson attributes the Commonwealth\u2019s success to investments in small businesses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCreating small businesses and supporting small businesses is really the key to generating employment in the state, and anything they can do that supports that will help the unemployment rate in the state,\u201d Richardson said.<\/p>\n<p>Pennsylvania\u2019s Civilian Labor Force reached a record high of more than 6,600,000 in July.<\/p>\n<p>Of the 11 nonfarm industry supersectors, Leisure and Hospitality reached a record high.<\/p>\n<p>The largest decline was in Education and Health Services.<\/p>\n<p>As to what the state can do to maintain its momentum:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnytime you can get a tax incentive for hiring really makes a big difference in your ability to add employment for the state. Taxes are really a major stumbling block for businesses, especially family-owned small businesses like the one I created myself,\u201d Richardson said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m blissfully ignorant on what they\u2019re doing. All I know is that I\u2019m doing well and that there\u2019s a lot of opportunity out there for others to do the same, so hooray for Pa.,\u201d Guddat said.<\/p>\n<p>The state\u2019s labor force and nonfarm jobs statistics report for August is scheduled to be released later this month.<\/p>\n<p>Pennsylvania 2026 Labor Day Report is accessible <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pa.gov\/content\/dam\/copapwp-pagov\/en\/dli\/documents\/about-dli\/labor-day-report\/labor%2520day%2520report_2026_final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania entered Labor Day with unemployment below 4%, outperforming the national rate. PENNSYLVANIA, USA \u2014 Pennsylvania\u2019s unemployment rate&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-281334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}