By Christpopher DeSantis, DeSantis Property Management For the past 8-10 years, Pittsburgh PA has been experiencing an apartment building boom. Every single year since 2017, at least 2,100 new apartment units were added to the city’s existing stock, either by new constructoin or conversion of an existing building of another use. Yet despite the rash of new multifamily complexes,a recent CBRE report  ranks Pittsburgh at the bottom for cities with new apartment buildings. At the same time, CBRE also ranks Pittsburgh as #4 among the smaller tech markets in the United States. CBRE’s Sco ..read more

The various reports on the labor market this past week drew a clearer picture of what the employment situation is. Many observers were disappointed in the report from ADP on private payroll growth on Tuesday. Private employers added 362,000 jobs in July, well below expectations; however, the forecasts for hiring focused on growing demand and apparently discounted the shortage in worker supply. Below the headline number, private employers reported overwhelmingly that they had openings there were going unfilled. You can’t add to payrolls if you don’t have applicants. Thursday’s report on unemplo ..read more

I had the need to meet up with a customer during the lunch hour last Friday in the Strip District for a brief exchange of materials. The new Terminal Building was a convenient place to meet since it is about halfway between our two offices. The inconvenient part was the usual Strip District stuff: people all over the place, no place to park, impatient drivers on Smallman Street creating their own lanes where none exist. Except that those were the typical inconveniences of the Strip in June 2019, not of the past 15 months. The “business as usual” irritations of a busy streetscape were but anoth ..read more

There have been some interesting follow on articles about the jobs report Friday, which is being seen as a) great news; b) very disappointing; or c) a relief after April’s disappointing hiring. Which one you choose depends largely upon which political party you are fervently backing and which partisan media you are following. (If the last sentence does not describe you, chances are you would choose option C.) My take on Friday was that our economic situation has been created by an almost unprecedented non-economic disruption that will require more than a few months to re-balance. One thing I t ..read more

Economists breathed a sigh of relief when the Census Bureau reported that U.S. employers added 559,000 jobs in May. That’s more than double the job creation in April and more in line with what expectations would be for a fully recovering economy. The unemployment rate renewed its downward trend, falling to 5.8%. Forecasts for May job growth were slightly higher – most topped 600,000 – but after April’s surprising shortfall, no economist was making a confident estimate for May. The number reported Friday morning more closely mirrored Thursday’s data on private payrolls from ADP. The payroll pro ..read more

Last week’s report on inflation seems to have triggered more fears than the report on March’s inflation, even though there was every reason to believe that prices were racing much higher as the economy raced ahead. The 4.2% jump in consumer prices (CPI) and 6.2% hike in producer prices (PPI) were remarkable only if compared to the consensus expectations for April’s inflation. The economy is bursting back open much faster than was anticipated just four months ago. The supply chain for virtually every product is disrupted and the labor force remains 3 million people smaller than the number of pe ..read more

The title of this post is a bit misleading. The past week was something of a tidal wave of good news that was doused by one bit of very bad news. Rather than burying the lede, let’s start with the bad news: U.S. Steel cancelled its billion-dollar upgrade to the Mon Valley Works. The project involved a $250 million cogeneration plant at the Clairton Coke Works and a billion-dollar new rolling mill at the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock. You can read the labor/industry reaction here and some of the environmentalists reactions here, or read some of both here. For the construction i ..read more

Perhaps construction has not thawed in your corner of Pittsburgh, but the market has noticeably come to life. The $1.4 billion first quarter construction volume was an unexpected upside surprise. Recent project announcements mirror the strengths of the Pittsburgh economy: more industrial space being developed, healthcare construction on the upswing, college work rebounding after better-than-expected enrollment results, big public bids receiving lots of competitive attention. To the former point, ALCOSAN’s board will award contracts totaling $87 million for its East Head Works project, which ca ..read more

Good Friday began with good news from the labor market. The monthly Employment Situation Summary was released by the U.S. Census Bureau and it showed that employers had added 916,000 jobs in March, the largest increase since August 2020. The gains in employment were spread across the spectrum, with the largest increases in hospitality (280,000) and construction (110,000). Unemployment decreased to 6.0 percent, with 9.7 people unemployed. That’s 4 million more unemployed than at the peak in February 2020. A total of 8.4 million fewer people were working in March 2021 compared to February 2020 ..read more

On Friday, the Pittsburgh Business Times ran an article on construction activity in February that quoted Dodge Data & Analytics’ report that a mere $36 million in construction started in that month, The lede was that construction declined 88% year-over-year. (In the interest of full disclosure, I worked for what was formerly the F. W. Dodge Division of McGraw-Hill for 14 years at the beginning of my career.) Given the increased level of activity in the construction market since February 1, this headline and data seemed out of step with reality. I did a few minutes research and found t ..read more