The figures are from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data for total non-farm employment from the end of December, 1994 through the end of November, 2002. The figures for the final month of 2002 will not be available for several more weeks, but they will not change Pennsylvania’s overall standing.

For the eight-year period since 1994, Pennsylvania ranked behind four of its six neighboring states – Delaware (14^th), Maryland (16^th), New Jersey (29^th), and New York (37^th). Ohio was 43^rd and West Virginia 47^th.

The state gained about 407,500 jobs over the past eight years, climbing from 5.232 million to 5.639 million. Most of those gains came during the extended national economic boom that lasted into the year 2000. During that period, Pennsylvania trailed the rest of the nation badly in job creation, usually ranking in the mid-40s but dropping as low as 47^th in 1999.

"While the rest of the country was enjoying tremendous job growth in the late 1990s, especially in the technology sector of the economy, Pennsylvania did not," said state Senator Vincent J. Fumo (D-Philadelphia), the chairman of the Democratic Appropriations Committee. "So when a lot of those new technology businesses failed, many other states suffered job losses that were worse than ours, because we had never gained many high-tech jobs to begin with."

Now that the dot-com economy has contracted and the job climate in that sector of the economy has stabilized, Pennsylvania is closer to its traditional ranking of the past eight years. For the first 11 months of 2002, Pennsylvania slid to 38^th among the 50 states, with a decline in employment of 0.42 percent. Thirty states had a net loss of jobs heading into the final month of 2002.

"During most of the Ridge-Schweiker Administration, this state’s policy was to cut corporate taxes under a promise to improve the business climate, but we got very little job growth that we would not have experienced anyway through the strong national economy," Fumo said.

"At the same time, the state allowed its share of education funding to decline, forcing local school districts to increase property taxes on their residents," he added. "For the past eight years, Pennsylvania took money that should have gone to education and instead gave tax breaks to big business, and we got almost nothing back in return."

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