Lehigh Valley unemployment remains unchanged at 8.1 percent in May

The regional lost 1,600 nonfarm jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Lehigh Valley area unemployment figures stood mostly flat in May,  trends indicative of a stalled economic recovery, a new report shows.

Local unemployment was 8.1 percent last month, according to the Department of Labor & Industry, the same as April.

The report shows scant signs of job growth, expect for seasonal upticks from industries that normally hire in the spring and little change in the work force.

Seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs fell 1,600, or 0.5 percent, to 341,200 from the prior month. The labor force added 200 members, or 0.5 percent, to 425,900. The number of unemployed people remained the same.

Job growth has slowed in recent months, fueling anxiety about the strength of a recovery that national economists says formally began in mid-2009.

Steven Zellers, an analyst with the state labor department, said the big picture shows improvement from one year ago, when local unemployment was 8.7 percent and the region reported 2,400 fewer nonfarm jobs.

“Obviously, it would be better if we were growing greatly, but a flat month is better than backwards,” Zellers said Monday.

The May report included nearly 200 job eliminations at Cadmus Specialty Publications in Wilson Borough, which announced in February it would close.

The coming months will need hires to offset planned job reductions from at least two companies.

T-Mobile USA is closing a call center in Hanover Township, Lehigh County, at the end of the month, eliminating 605 jobs as part of a restructuring. The company says about 20 percent of employees have opted to relocated to other T-Mobile sites.

Personal organizer company Day-Timers will move Lower Macungie operations to other sites beginning in September, eventually closing the local plant, eliminating about 300 local jobs.

Also in the May report:

• On an unadjusted basis, the region added 2,200 jobs last month. Most of that came from leisure and hospitality, an industry that normally expands in spring, which added 1,800 jobs.
• Government, which has shrunk by 1,100 jobs over the past year, mostly because of belt tightening at municipalities and school districts, cut 100 jobs in May.
• Local unemployment is worse than the state average of 7.4 percent but better than New Jersey’s jobless rate of 9.2 percent. National unemployment is 8.2 percent.

The pre-recession norm was about 5 percent unemployment. Economists say it will be several years of steady job growth to return to that level.