A day after the federal government reported that the country added a higher-than-expected 528,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department announced Thursday that the number of Americans who signed up for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level since November.

The U.S. labor market performed well beyond expectations last month, adding 528,000 jobs and dropping the unemployment rate to 3.5%.

Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate dropped below 5% in March, something the state hasn’t seen since the rate peaked at 16.5% during the early days of the pandemic. 

Apprenticeship programs within the building and construction trades are eligible for part of $1.5 million in grant funding through Pennsylvania’s workforce diversity grant program. 

An update to Pennsylvania’s rules regarding how employers pay tipped workers will be voted on by the state Independent Regulatory Review Commission during a meeting next month. 

The Wolf administration announced a $2.5 million grant program Friday to boost the state’s clean energy sector as it tries to rebound from COVID-19 job losses. 

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry (L&I) returned more than $3.5 million in earned wages to Pennsylvania workers in 2021 after investigating more than 4,000 complaints of alleged labor law violations. 

The PRO Act, a prospective legislative move currently under consideration in the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, as proposed would ban state right-to-work laws, require employers to provide personal employee information to unions, such as cell phone numbers and addresses, and make it harder for companies to legally hire gig workers.

The nationwide shortage of construction workers is posing challenges for the industry, including making it harder to meet deadlines, raising costs to complete projects, and forcing firms to ask their skilled laborers to do more work. There's no easy solutions in sight, but those in the field are making efforts to tackle the problem.

“I can do this, my body was made to do this.”