The Philadelphia Mastermind Group was given the opportunity to learn about the state of the economy from guest speaker Paul Flora from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Paul talked about the historic period of economic growth and looked at a variety of factors that may indicate the overall health of economy, including unemployment, labor participation rates, new home sales, and the strength of individual states.

Growth tends to be stronger in large urban areas – especially true in Pennsylvania where Philadelphia has outpaced the state overall in payroll growth. Metro area unemployment rates ranged from 3.6 percent in Gettysburg and Lancaster to almost 9 percent in Ocean City in the past year.