Despite deceleration of non-farm payroll jobs, Floyd and Clark have enjoyed positive job creation

The most recently available period for county non-farm payroll data is the 3rd quarter of 2008. With the recession officially starting in December of 2007, these numbers offer an opportunity to see how Floyd and Clark have done with respect to non-farm payrolls during the first 3 quarters of one of the deepest recession in decades. For context, we compare non-farm payrolls in Floyd and Clark to the entire Louisville Metro area.

Before we do that, let’s do a quick tutorial on the difference between the unemployment rate for a county and non-farm payrolls located in that county. The unemployment rate and data on non-farm payrolls are collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics through an establishment survey and the household survey.

The commonly used unemployment rate is based on the “household survey”, and the resident may or may not be an employee in the county. For example, if someone is living in Floyd County and was working in Louisville, but is presently unemployed, that citizen would show up as unemployed in Floyd County.

The “establishment survey” gives us non-farm payroll numbers for establishments located in a specific county. So when we hear that non-farm payrolls increased or decreased for a specific county, this represents the jobs located in that county only.

We’ll have other labor market data for Floyd and Clark in subsequent newsletters. For now, let’s take a look at quarterly non-farm payroll numbers. This represents the total number of non-farm payroll jobs in Floyd and Clark counties. Our analysis will focus on the change in quarterly non-farm payroll numbers.

As you can see from the graph, the increase in non-farm payroll jobs has decelerated from previous quarters. Despite this deceleration, Floyd and Clark have enjoyed positive job creation during the first three quarters of the national recession. Above the 0 line represents an increase in non-farm payrolls, and below represents a decline in non-farm payroll jobs. The graph indicates that while Louisville metro was observing an overall decline in non-farm payroll jobs, Floyd and Clark were still enjoying positive job creation.

A word of caution is in order however. During the 4th quarter of 2008 and the 1st quarter of 2009, we have observed significant increases in local unemployment rates. So don’t be surprised that we will likely see an overall decline in non-farm payrolls for Floyd and Clark for the 4th quarter of 2008 and the 1st quarter of 2009. Through the first 3 quarters of the current recession however, Floyd and Clark have seen much more resiliency in the sustainability of non-farm payroll jobs located in those two counties.

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This information is provided by

Uric Dufrene. 

Uric Dufrene, Ph.D. holds the Sanders Chair in Business in the School of Business at Indiana University Southeast.  He conducts research on local and regional economic trends, and teaches corporate finance at the undergraduate and graduate levels.   He previously served as dean of the School of Business.