Gus Faucher, chief economist for The PNC Financial Services Group, notes in a Post-Gazette commentary that Pittsburgh’s employment is “back to where it was before the pandemic, give or take, and the rebound has been much weaker locally than in many other parts of the country.”
But he adds that “the biggest problem for the local job market remains labor supply and not demand. The labor force in Pittsburgh — the number of people working or looking for work — is lower by about 40,000 compared to before the pandemic.”
And Faucher notes, as often has the Allegheny Institute, that Pittsburgh lags national numbers. To wit, Faucher says the national labor force has grown by about 7 percent post-pandemic.
The PNC analyst cites the now-familiar list of culprits – “a population that is rapidly aging into retirement and a net outflow of population to other parts of the country.”
Additionally, he says “international in-migration … is rapidly drying up due to federal policy changes.”
But Faucher concludes with this not only sobering but question-raising assessment:
“Pittsburgh employment may finally be back to its pre-pandemic level,” (“give or take,” we remind he says), but the area’s problems with job creation are likely to continue indefinitely (emphasis ours).
Well, isn’t that interesting? And how can this be?
Weren’t we told that Renaissance I and II (and all heavily taxpayer-funded “renaissances” to follow) would be the rock-solid footers for the expansive foundations of Pittsburgh prosperity for multiple scores of years to come?
Wasn’t the world’s shortest subway supposed to do the trick, too, back in the mid-1980s? But, of course, years later it would be the North Shore Connector and a scuttled “spine line” to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center that would cement progress for Pittsburgh, right?
Well, hold on – we needed a brand-new convention center to bring the bacon home, don’t you know. But we must – we must – have a brand-new convention center hotel to make it all work. Yeah, that’s the ticket, one the pols and the pimps for “government-produced prosperity” punch to this day still, obviously punch-drunk to the reality of the obvious fallacy.
And we really can’t prosper, truly, until we extend light-rail service, laterally through the North Shore and on west to Pittsburgh International Airport and to points North, we have been told repeatedly. Never mind that buses can move more, and more effectively, public transit riders than light rail.
Oh, yes, new stadiums for the Pirates and Steelers and a new arena for the Penguins will seal our future economic prosperity, right. Thud, right and left.
And a few years before that, a brand-new Pittsburgh International Airport that its rah-rah-sis-boom-bahers promised would lead Greater Pittsburgh to wild new gains, from population to employment. As will a new, partially brand-new PIT, we have been promised anew.
It’s a new port that at least one local radio commentator – Colin Dunlap on KDKA — says more and more observers tell him amounts to only a new front door, and a very expensive one at that. New lipstick on the same old pig?
Oh, wait: Let us not forgot the oodles and boodles of population influx, downstream industries and jobs, Jobs, JOBS we were promised from Shell’s heavily taxpayer “incentivized” Beaver County plastics “cracker” plant. Shell’s trying to the sell the underwhelming facility these days.
Well, what about Pittsburgh’s “eds and meds” success story, you ask? Thank goodness for that, yes?
But as William Fulton wrote in the Aug. 4, 2025, edition of Governing:
“(I)t may be that the next generation of prosperity that meds and eds can generate will not be as job-intensive as the meds and eds themselves have been. Which means that it’s important for both the meds and eds themselves and their host cities to fund” – yes, he used the word “fund,” not “find” — ways for the new wealth to be widely shared so the entire region benefits, not just those with jobs directly tied to the meds and eds spinoffs.”
Ah, even more public money to prime those proverbial pumps of our collective prosperity, eh?
And then, of course, there’s the new darling of the in-crowd – artificial intelligence (AI). Governments just about everywhere have been throwing big money at the AI-ers, wanting to get in on the ground floor of what more than a few observers fear might be mankind’s most dangerous technological “advance” that, by the way, stands to produce a paucity of jobs but at a premium taxpayer price.
If we’ve left out any unrealized gains, so to speak, it’s only because they are too numerous to mention any more in this space and certainly not all.
Iteration after iteration of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County government – largely run by one political party and controlled by organized labor – likely has spent hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars over the past 75 years on “economic development” that has led to more economic debasement than much else.
That’s more than evident from Pittsburgh’s chronic population and jobs malaise and repeated government-sponsored, taxpayer-funded interventions that are doomed failure.
Never mind, as Milton Freidman reminded, that “The government’s solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem itself.”
Never mind, as Adrian Rogers reminded, that “The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.”
Never mind, as Ludwig von Mises reminded, that “Government intervention is not only superfluous and useless, but also harmful.”
And never mind, as Oliver DeMille reminded, that “Government intervention is not solving the problems, and in fact the governments around the world that are intervening the most in their economies are struggling more.”
But that we have to constantly remind our “leaders” of such things is a true tragedy of our republican (small “r”) and economic commons, one that repeatedly turns government of, by and for the people into government of, by and for the government.
And in Pittsburgh, it has done a recidivist-rotten job because generation after generation of Pittsburgh’s leaders, their rank ignorance laid bare, have absolutely no comprehension of the damage they hath wrought.
More truly is the pity. And that theorem’s proof is in Pittsburgh’s constantly lackluster population and jobs numbers.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
