Friday Musings on the Pittsburgh Jobs Front

Hourly employment prospects in the Pittsburgh area over the next 3 years have improved dramatically over what we have experienced since 9-11. The list of all the recent announcements that will influence this is long: Westinghouse will move 3,000 employees from Monroeville to Cranberry Twp, then ADD another 1,000 employees, Simon Malls is nearing final approvals on a new Waterfront style mall in Cranberry that will employ over 1,000 people. Another local developer, Don Rogers, who has many successful retail projects already under his belt, has plans for an additional 800,000 square foot office complex around the new Simon Mall property projected to bring yet another 1,000 jobs, the new casino in Pittsburgh will create a projected 1,000 permanent jobs while the casino near the Meadowlands in Washington County will add another 300-400, The new pens arena will not only add many additional construction jobs over the next 2 years but will net out additional hourly positions once completed. On smaller scales but still significant Bayer will hold a grand opening today on a new call center that will add 60 jobs, a German company, Sycor, will add 80 jobs with the move of it’s headquarters to Pittsburgh, Medrad has recently projected the addition of another 100 jobs. The Post Gazette’s Bill Toland wrote a nice article on the impact all the new construction will have on the area over the next 2-3 years.

Yes, there have been a couple of set back, most notably Sony eliminated up to 900 positions over the next year, but these will be more than made up with jobs added elsewhere in the metro. Hopefully some of the lost Sony jobs can be made up by new tenants in the space being freed up by Sony, but only time will tell.

Manpower released a survey this past week on the hardest to fill jobs nationally. It is noted that the positions have decidedly trended toward blue collar. Click this link to read more.