The biggest story this year in the Lehigh Valley job market was that there was no story. Despite predictions of a spirited rebound in the labor market locally, hiring stagnated.
Over the past year, the region added a paltry 300 jobs to the roughly 300,000 that already existed, or 0.1 percent. The unemployment rate went nowhere, each month bouncing aimlessly in a range between 5.3 and 5.9 percent. True, the painfully big layoffs slowed, but robust hiring never began.
Today, nearly 20,000 people in the Lehigh Valley are out of work.
So, will the jobs return in 2005? The short answer is a shoulder-shrugging ''maybe.''
''I would think hiring will be lukewarm,'' said Kamran Afshar, a Bethlehem economist who tracks the Lehigh Valley economy. ''I don't think hiring would be hot, but I don't think it will revert to the bad old days in the early part of the recovery when there was no hiring.''
Here are some clues about hiring in 2005:
The bad
Job growth, or lack thereof. Individual jobs come and go, but the total number of jobs locally stands at 289,700, about where it has been since 2000, according to labor department data. The numbers just aren't showing any trend of improvement.
Unemployment. The most recent unemployment rate for the Lehigh Valley was 5.9 percent in October. That's worse than a year ago, when it was 5.5 percent. This year, 1,200 more people are counted as unemployed. So those measures are worsening, and data in recent months provide no evidence for optimism in 2005.
Help-wanted ads. Newspaper employment advertisements are generally a good indicator of hiring to come. But in the Lehigh Valley, help-wanted ads have remained in the tank, according to an index maintained by the Conference Board of New York. The index for the Lehigh Valley, based on 1987 as 100, hit 91 in January 2001. In October, it registered an abysmal 29, the lowest in at least 15 years for that month. The trend in recent months has been a worsening in the help-wanted index.
Purchasing managers survey. Every three months, Afshar asks Lehigh Valley purchasing managers about their hiring plans for the next six months. Those managers in October 2003 said they'd hire an average of 2.2 people, which is pretty optimistic on Afshar's scale. But through 2004, each quarterly survey showed waning optimism. The most recent one in October, covering hiring expectations through March 2005, fell to 1.6 additional hires.
True, the fact that purchasing managers expect to hire is good, but the trend of declining optimism is not. ''Confidence during course of year has eroded,'' Afshar said.
The good
Manpower survey. A counter to the purchasing managers survey is a different survey conducted by staffing service Manpower Inc. In results released last week, Manpower said hiring prospects for January through March are better than a year ago.
According to the survey, 31 percent of Lehigh Valley employers expect to hire more workers from January to March, while 3 percent anticipate staff reductions. The favorable hiring outlook was boosted by excellent survey numbers in the Easton/Phillipsburg area, where 38 percent of employers expect to hire and none expects layoffs.
''You can see a difference this year,'' said Marilyn Neidermeier, manager of the Easton office of Manpower. ''Maybe it's because the economy is starting to turn around.''
Wages. A monthly report by a local jobs agency, CareerLink Lehigh Valley, noted that wages are finally turning higher.
''For the first time in nearly four years, we are noticing a growing trend of local employers increasing entry level wages as the market tightens for all manufacturing and trades workers as well as specific, isolated professional level positions,'' the November report said.
However, factory wage data from the state labor department in October was $15.02 per hour, a mild increase from the $14.94 a year ago. That half-percent increase appears even weaker considering inflation has been running at about 6 percent locally, according to The Morning Call/Kamran Afshar Consumer Price Index.
Temporary help has picked up recently at area staffing agencies, an indicator that permanent hiring could be close at hand. In fact, the Easton office of Manpower has been busier than usual with employers requesting workers — not for temporary work but for permanent positions, Neidermeier said.
Employment In October, 315,500 people who live in the Lehigh Valley were employed. That's 3,200 more than October of last year. Of course, because there's been no job growth locally, that suggests people are finding work outside the Lehigh Valley and are enduring lengthy commutes to work.
Labor force growth. The labor force reflects people working plus those actively looking for work. The labor force has stagnated in recent months, but at 335,100, it remains well above last year's 330,400. That could reflect an optimism among job-seekers who are re-entering the work force after being discouraged at their prospects of getting a job a year ago.
Layoffs. Local layoffs, as measured by first-time claims for unemployment checks, have dropped significantly over the past year, in a definite trend downward. Though there have been some high-profile layoffs announced — at sofa slip-cover maker SureFit and business information company D&B, for example — layoffs have subsided to pre-recession levels.
Stock market. The stock market always looks ahead, so its direction recently gives some indication of how well companies nationally are expected to do in 2005. That has meaning in the Lehigh Valley, which has a fairly normal representation of industries reflected in publicly traded stocks.
One popular measure of the U.S. stock market is the Standard & Poor's 500 index, which has risen 8 percent in 2004. That's pretty good, but consider that nearly 7 percent of that 8 percent has come in the final three months of the year. That spells high expectations for 2005.
So, the indicators about hiring in 2005 are mixed. What is certain, however, is that the Lehigh Valley economy will not have recovered from the 2001 recession until it starts creating more jobs.
''That seriously bothers me,''Afshar said. ''An economic recovery without labor market recovery is like a meatloaf without meat.
''That's where the rubber meets the road — jobs. We can't seriously have an economic recovery without job creation.''
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