President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress last night contained the sound bite of "jobs," "pass this jobs bill" or "pass it right away" multiple times.  Actually, somebody counted, and "jobs" alone was said 37 times in 34 minutes.  Our local newspapers ran articles from national sources on the story.  Click here for the Post-Gazette's coverage (courtesy of the NY Times), and the Tribune-Review (by way of the USA Today, in a semi-surprising turn).  Click here for reaction from Pennsylvania politicians.

The national unemployment rate stands at 9.1%.  You can look at the state unemployment rates by clicking here and scrolling down the right side of the site.  Pennsylvania's was at 7.8% for July 2011 (psst, that makes ours lower than Ohio, West Virginia, New York, and New Jersey!  But Maryland beat us by 0.6%). Serious number junkies like myself can click here to view Pennsylvania's monthly numbers going back to January 2001.  I promise you, it's very interesting reading.

Now let's look at Pennsylvania county-by-county.  Click here to see that for July 2011, Allegheny County had an unemployment rate of 7.1%, meaning 2.0% under the national unemployment rate, and lower than PA's statewide average for July 2011.  Allegheny County always fares better, it seems, be it housing or jobs.

Here's a bright spot to shine some more light . . . UPMC, our region's largest employer, is planning to hire 1,900 more employees next year.