The effect is that the number of people working in Lancaster County is declining by attrition, Miller said. Retirees don\u2019t collect unemployment insurance, so the county\u2019s unemployment rate has stayed low, at 3.6% in June from 3.2% a year prior, according to Miller.<\/p>\n
The report showed the number of jobs in Lancaster County increased by 4,200 in the second quarter of 2025, even though the workforce shrank by 614 people.<\/p>\n
An increase in jobs coupled with a smaller labor force could mean more people are working multiple jobs, according to Miller. Another possibility is that some people transitioned from self-employed to employed, Miller said.<\/p>\n
Parsing the data<\/p>\n
The EDC\u2019s report draws on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which rely on surveys and are subject to change. Tuesday\u2019s revised national jobs report was a reminder of that.<\/p>\n
Those new figures showed 911,000 fewer jobs gained across the country between March 2024 and March of this year. Broken down by state, Pennsylvania\u2019s job gains were effectively cut in half from 70,000 to 33,000 in that period, according to the new data.<\/p>\n
The revised data at the state level could be a harbinger for Lancaster\u2019s employment numbers, but the BLS data become less accurate when applied to smaller areas, said Matthew Knittel, director of the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office.<\/p>\n
But the overall trends identified in the EDC\u2019s report mostly jibe with other indicators, Knittel said. For example, Pennsylvania\u2019s growing share of people reaching retirement age has been a reality for at least the last five years, Knittel said.<\/p>\n
Sales tax collections in the last two months have increased 5.5% from the same time last year, Knittel said, a sign that Pennsylvanians are not shying away from purchases.<\/p>\n
The fiscal office director said he thinks enough Pennsylvanians are feeling good from gains in the stock market and the still-growing housing market to keep consumer spending at strong levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the stock market is giving a lot of tailwind to the economy right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
READ:\u00a0COVID, tariffs help launch Amish-powered company in Lancaster County toward market dominance<\/a><\/p>\n Migrant labor<\/p>\n The EDC analysis also pointed to the second Trump administration\u2019s efforts to reduce the use of migrant workers.<\/p>\n Construction and farming have historically relied on migrant labor, two important faces of the county\u2019s economy, Miller said.<\/p>\n EDC staff have heard from businesses that are concerned a drop in the size of the undocumented workforce could hurt their production capacity, Miller said, but the EDC did not have hard numbers showing such a change yet.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a conversation people are having,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n According to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Lancaster County in 2017 had the most people working on farms of any county in the state, with more than 8,000.<\/p>\n The same year, 161 migrant workers utilizing temporary work visa programs were in Lancaster County, much less than in Chester (1,071) and York (234), according to a report from the state agriculture department. The same report did not estimate the number of undocumented farm workers by county, but they made up about 49% of agricultural workers statewide in 2017.<\/p>\n Migrant and undocumented workers are calculated in the BLS jobs data, Knittel said, but they\u2019re not broken down by category. That makes it hard to draw conclusions on how a federal crackdown on immigration is affecting the data, he said.<\/p>\n What to watch<\/p>\n Many of the new tariffs imposed since January have been in place for a while now, but it may not be until the second half of 2025 until businesses have to face them head-on, Miller said.<\/p>\n A lot of businesses, including in Lancaster County, used the time between President Donald Trump\u2019s announcement of tariffs and their taking effect to stock up on imported supplies, both Knittel and Miller said. Thus, it may not be until the latter months of 2025 that businesses run out of tariff-free materials and start to see their production costs go up.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to start seeing how those actually affect the input costs for those businesses,\u201d Miller said. \u201cFor me, that\u2019s something to watch and pay attention to.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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