The City of Pittsburgh’s 2015 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report was released today. Its 195 pages are available for perusal here and it is chock full of details on City finances as is the case every year.
One item worth attention comes from the quote from the City Controller upon the report’s release. “In 2015, Pittsburgh saw a minimal decrease in the collection of the Local Services Tax. Local Services tax collections have remained stagnant over the past several years pointing to little or no job growth in the city.”
Since the LST is a flat rate tax paid where one works, dividing collections in total by the flat dollar amount has typically served as a way to approximate the number of jobs in the municipality collecting the tax. As we noted in a 2009 Brief “Using City local services tax data (the $52 emergency services tax formerly known as the occupational privilege tax) a reasonable approximation of how many people work in Pittsburgh can be obtained. In 2000, 324,400 workers paid the tax while the most recent data for 2007 shows a decline to 315,130.”
There was a significant dip in 2008, but that is also when the collection method changed along with the name of the tax due to confusion. If we look at the last six years (2010-15) from audited data in the CAFR based on people subject to the LST in Pittsburgh (residents and non-residents working in the City), we see the following job counts:
10 268,000
11 252,000
12 271,000
13 265,000
14 267,00
15 266,000
2015 was down from 2014, and below the high point of the time frame (2012). The low point was 2011 with 252,000 jobs as measured by the LST.
