|
|
|
The Philadelphia region is comprised of eleven counties in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The Pennsylvania counties are Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Lehigh, Montgomery, Northampton, and Philadelphia. The New Jersey counties are Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester. And lastly, New Castle county in Delaware. These eleven counties are part of the Philadelphia Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA), the sixth largest in the United States.
Philadelphia continues to grow as a hotbed of high-tech and service industries, with sustained growth bolstered by the density of new-age pharmaceutical, health care, and service industry activity. Over 80 universities and colleges graduate highly-educated people into the workforce, providing local industries with a force of knowledgeable and hard-working personnel. Culturally sophisticated and centrally located among the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, the Philadelphia region provides a desirable quality of life and business climate to local residents and industries, as well as an advantageous and dynamic climate to attract employers into the area.
Job Growth in the Philadelphia labor force has suffered slightly over the last year, with the unemployment rate up 0.8 percent from November 2001 to 5.3 percent as of November2002. However, the trend has changed in recent months, unemployment having dropped from the peak 5.8 percent experienced in August 2002. The Philadelphia MSA continues to outperform both the state and national averages, 5.6 percent and 6.0 percent, respectively, as of November 2002.
|