By Joe Genco

Eagle Staff Writer

Most of the residents of Butler County who seek employment are able to find jobs, according to data provided by the state.

The county continues to be ranked in the top 15 of the 67 counties in the state for unemployment rate. In July, the latest month with data available, the state Department of Labor and Industry reported that the county had a 5.1 percent unemployment rate. That was an increase of 0.2 of a percentage point from June, but still lower than the statewide average of 5.6 percent.

According to the Labor Department, the county has a workforce of 98,300 people and in July 5,000 of them were unemployed.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the county’s population in 2015 to be 186,818.

Though the unemployment figures fluctuate from month to month, Butler generally has led a nine-county region in southwestern Pennsylvania for a number of years.

Allegheny County is the next strongest, with a July unemployment rate of 5.2 percent.

Elsewhere in the region, Venango County had 7.6 percent unemployment in July and Armstrong County had 7.7 percent.

Ken Raybuck, executive director of the Butler County Center for Economic Development said that the county can survive fluctuations in the economy because it has a variety of businesses.

“We have a very diverse economy here unlike some in the region. Certain counties, like Armstrong or Greene, are tied more to coal production and that business has slowed down,” Raybuck said.

Natural gas drilling operations also have slowed in the region recently because of the low price of foreign oil, he said.

However, the county has employers that have remained steady like Westinghouse Electric Company in Cranberry Township, Butler Health System and AK Steel. The federal government is the county’s largest employer.

The county has also been able to attract or retain young people with affordable housing in the southern part of the county and educational opportunities.

“A lot of our workforce is sort of homegrown. We have people that go right from high school to Butler County Community College and on to Slippery Rock (University) to finish their degree,” he said.

The county has seen a fluctuation of about 4.5. percentage points in its rate during the past 10 years. In 2007 it hit a low point of 3.7 percent, but it spiked during the economic recession that started in 2008. In 2010, it hit a high point of 8.7 percent, but by December 2015, it had come back down to 4.2 percent.

The national unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in August and July, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, which reported that there were 275,000 new jobs added in July and 151,000 in August.

County Commissioner Leslie Osche said that it is good that the residents of the county have jobs, but the unemployment rate is not always the best indicator of how the local economy is doing.

Some businesses have shown growth, some have laid off workers and some have vacancies that they have struggled to fill, she said.

“All of our partners in this county tend to be a little conservative, so I think they have really survived a lot of the ups and downs of the market and the ups and downs of the economic supply,” she said.

AK Steel, which had done very little hiring, has been hiring workers recently because of retirements, she said. Westinghouse and MSA in Cranberry also have been hiring and adding jobs, she said.

Many business that have had older workers retire have struggled to find people with the correct experience or qualifications to fill those vacancies. There also are some cases where applicants are disqualified after failing a drug test, she said.

As more members of the Baby Boomer generation get older and retire, this problem will become larger, she said.

“We have a tremendous mismatch in many places and it is going to take some time to change the dynamic and help people understand the jobs that are really out there,” she said.

Despite a changing labor force, Osche said that people in the county are hard workers.

“That strong work ethic remains in this part of the country, and especially in Butler County, we still have that,” she said.

Rick Tannery, professor at Slippery Rock University, said that the unemployment rate is typically tabulated through household surveys, so there are likely many people who live in the county but have jobs outside of the county. The easy access to Pittsburgh and lower taxes have made the county attractive to people who hold jobs in the city, he said.

There also are plenty of unskilled or entry-level jobs available in the county.

“If you wanted to find a job you can find one,” he said.

Between 4 percent and 5 percent unemployment could be considered “full employment” for the county, Tannery said.

Some areas may see the rate fall as low as 3 percent, but that would likely be a temporary decrease caused by construction or gas drilling.

Some economists have pointed out that while unemployment has gone down since the recession, the work force participation rate, 63 percent in Pennsylvania, has decreased to its lowest level since the 1970s.

That means that 37 percent of Pennsylvanians who are eligible to work are not actively seeking employment for various reasons.

Tannery said that in Butler County the nonparticipants are mostly people who are on disability or have taken early retirement, not young people who have “given up” on finding jobs, which is the case in some places.

Many nonparticipants still contribute to the local economy by patronizing local businesses and spending money on health care, he said.

While the county’s population has seen steady growth so has its total number of participants in the labor force, which is a positive indicator, he said.