Pittsburgh continues to have lower levels of unemployment than most similarly sized cities, according to Tuesday’s U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report on 372 metropolitan areas.

The Pittsburgh metropolitan statistical area has 4.3 percent unemployment, when not seasonally adjusted. That compared favorably to comparable cities such as Kansas City with an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent; Indianapolis, 5 percent; Richmond, 5.1 percent; Cleveland, 5.4 percent; and Charlotte, 5.6 percent.

Cincinnati matched Pittsburgh with a 4.3 percent unemployment rate while Minneapolis was doing better with a 3.2 percent unemployment rate.

The seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area is made up Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties. With seasonal adjustment, which takes into account higher hiring in the fall, the unemployment rate for the region was 5 percent in October.

Mark Price, a labor economist with the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, said the BLS report showed that job growth in Pittsburgh has picked up in the last 12 months.

But still, he said, the regional ranks in the bottom half for the percentage increase in the number of people who are employed, which has grown at a rate of less than 1 percent over the last 12 months.

“This low ranking reflects a combination of factors including that the region generally has slower population growth than a lot of metros but likely also reflects larger weakness in the Pennsylvania economy,” he said.

“The new data on job openings at the national level confirms that although the employment picture has improved there are still significantly more people actively looking for work than there are job openings, a fact which holds down wage growth.”

The data on job openings comes from a second report issued Tuesday that showed that nationally the number of job openings has been steadily rising, but still there were nearly twice as many unemployed workers than there were available jobs.

The report on job openings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics said there were 4.8 million job openings on the last day of October, but 9 million unemployed workers.

Elise Gould, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, in an analysis of the bureau’s statistics, noted that the 9 million unemployed workers leaves out 5.8 million people who are out of the labor market, but would be looking for work if the labor market was strong enough to attract them.

Ms. Gould said a sign that the labor market was finally tightening would be if wages were rising, but they have stayed stagnant. In a weak market, she said, jobs often stay open because employers hold out for overly qualified candidates for low wages.

The latest numbers may be a good sign for workers, Mr. Price said.

“If the recent improvement in the pace of job growth holds up over the next year, I would expect the typical worker will finally begin to see a real improvement in the size of their paycheck,” he said.

Ann Belser: abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.

First Published: December 10, 2014, 5:00 a.m.