MICHAEL S. WIRTZ / Staff Photographer
Laid-off workers milled about the parking lot of Reynolds Packaging Group in Downingtown last month after turning in their I.D. badges. The firm is mothballing the plant, which employed 150 people. Upheaval in the job market has hit Chester County hard. Continuing claims for unemployment benefits were up 114 percent from two years ago.
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Upheaval in the Region’s Job Market
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In epidemic of layoffs, no one is immune
Joblessness spreads in Pa. and N.J., caused by an ill economy. Any cure looks to be slow and painful.
He tracks the health of Center City through weekly conversations with commercial real estate brokers, and so far, he said, there haven't been too many vacancies.
That could change.
Law firms around the city have been shedding employees - 1,400 layoffs announced in the last six months - though some of those employees work in other cities. Statistics show that the biggest job losses in Philadelphia are in professional and business services.
In December 2007, 88,000 people were employed as lawyers, architects, paralegals, staffing recruiters, and accountants in Philadelphia. That was the highest employment in that sector since at least 1999. By February 2009, 6,900 of those jobs, nearly 8 percent, were gone.
Over the same time period, though, 4,500 teachers, nurses, doctors, orderlies, and therapists found work in the health and education sectors - the city's strongest job generators despite the recent cuts.
Outside the city, it's a different story.
Chester City, for example, has the highest unemployment in the Philadelphia area at 10.8 percent.
Like other old industrial communities such as Bristol Township or Norristown, Chester has had trouble for years as its manufacturing base eroded.
The area's bedroom communities are also suffering.
Consider Chester County.
Once rural, Chester County is now one of the fastest growing and wealthiest suburbs in the region, and has been ranked, just recently, the 21st highest among 3,100 counties in the nation by adjusted gross income - $96,578 in 2007, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
The county's unemployment rate of 5.8 percent in February was the lowest in the metropolitan area - and second lowest in Pennsylvania.
Still, upheaval in the job market has hit Chester County hard, striking at its primarily white-collar, educated workforce. As of February, 17,322 county residents were receiving unemployment benefits. Continuing claims for unemployment benefits were up 114 percent from two years ago - the biggest increase by county in the region.
In November, television retailer QVC said it would begin to lay off 900 employees, most from various facilities in West Chester. Five hundred were targeted at its West Chester distribution center. On March 27, QVC closed its call center, putting 250 people out of work. About 200 QVC jobs will move to the company's Florence, S.C., operations.
Reynolds Packaging Group is mothballing its plant in Downingtown; most of the 150 crew members came in late last month to turn in their badges. The facility prints consumer-product and pharmaceutical packaging.
Siemens Medical Solutions USA Inc. laid off 450 marketing, software, sales, and service workers from its U.S. headquarters in Malvern in September - part of a broader group of layoffs at the German-owned company.
Among those who lost their jobs there last year were three Chester County residents. They reconnected at a recent support and networking "career transition" meeting in King of Prussia.
"It's incredibly stressful," said Colleen Horan, an instructional designer and developer of e-learning courses who worked at Siemens for 19 years during two stints.
Now she hopes that her unemployment benefits and a part-time job delivering newspapers will be enough to keep her in her house in Phoenixville until she can find a full-time job.
South Jersey: Hard fall
The situation in Chester County isn't uncommon, said economist Michael Lahr, of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
