You can't, the mayor had no comment, neither did Austin Burke.  Sensitive subject for the mayor, so the Times cites people disconnected to the responsibility of CREATING jobs in this area. Jobless stats defy what the mayor has been selling us as his economic growth. The numbers don't lie. The mayor, on the other hand, has been lying about an increase in jobs for 8 long bullsh!tting years. No jobs, highest debt in the state and the only 25% tax increase, yeah, we need  more years of Chris "W" Doherty.
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NEPA jobless rate soars

Unemployment in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton metropolitan area rocketed to a 15-year high in February.

The jobless rate shot up to 8.6 percent, seven-tenths of a percentage point higher than Januarys adjusted 7.9 percent, the state Department of Labor and Industry reported today. The local metro area is tied with Williamsport for the highest among the states 14 metro areas.

The regions job total last month dropped by 2,800 to 255,600.

Unemployment in the area is the highest since April 1994, when it also was 8.6 percent. The region had 7,400 fewer jobs than in February 2008, state data show.

The latest total does not account for two sizable recent manufacturing layoffs, and the unemployment wave is expected to build.

I think it will be in double digits here before we can begin to think about a turnaround, said Satyajit Ghosh, Ph.D., a University of Scranton economics professor. This painful adjustment will go on for a while.

Februarys downturn includes 700 jobs lost in retail trade, 500 in manufacturing and 400 in professional and business services.

It seems like an across-the-board reduction, hitting every sector, said Todd Vonderheid, president of the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business and Industry. Its tough not to be a little depressed these days.

By county in the metro area, Luzernes jobless rate is 8.9 percent, Wyomings is 8.5 and Lackawannas is 8 percent. State Colleges 5.5 percent rate is Pennsylvanias lowest. The states jobless rate in February was 7.5 percent, and the nations was 8.1 percent.

Hundreds of manufacturing jobs have been lost this month, which will likely surface in March unemployment totals. Cinram Manufacturing laid off 200 people at its Olyphant plant that replicates CDs and DVDs and HPG International, a plastics maker in Mountaintop, closed and put 146 people out of work.

The bleeding of jobs in manufacturing and retail are typical during recessions, Dr. Ghosh said.

We have looked at a lot of (job) growth in recent years, Dr. Ghosh said. There is a lot of restructuring that we will see in the retail sector.

For 62-year-old Roland Parfaite, looking for a job has been a full-time job.

After working as a truck driver for years, the Wilkes-Barre resident and disabled veteran joined dozens of other unemployed people in the CareerLink office in Wilkes-Barre Monday.

Im willing to train and learn anything as long as I can get back into the work force, he said. I would even take a part-time job, but they are hard to find.

In recent months, more than 600 unemployed people have been looking for work at CareerLink in Wilkes-Barre on a typical week, said administrator Bill Dunn. A record number of laid-off people have filing for unemployment claims, he said.

Weve lost jobs across the board. What seems to be particularly disappointing is that we lost a lot of service jobs, said John Sumansky, Ph.D., chairman of the business department and director of the Center for Economic and Entrepreneurship Education at Misericordia University. The job losses reflect the fact that consumers are staying home and watching their money more carefully than in the past. They are not doing all those discretionary types of things which is typical behavior when the economy is doing well. On the upside, if the economy ever turns around, these service jobs are coming back.

Denise Allabaugh, staff writer, contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: jhaggerty@timesshamrock.com