Mayor's Office Celebrates New Jobs as Piecemeal Recovery Continues

A metal company will bring part of its roofing production business to Louisville and create 23 new jobs. That's enough to earn praise from city officials.The payroll for the jobs at Drexel Metals will be $1.5 million. The company has been offered half a million dollars in tax breaks over ten years to create the work.The announcement comes as Louisville slowly climbs out of a decade of job loss. The city shed more than 30,000 jobs from 2000 to 2010, but federal statistics show that trend reversing at an uncertain pace. Six thousand jobs have been added to the metro area since April. Mayor's spokesman Chris Poynter says small business jobs are essential as the city attempts to piece together a recovery."You have to look at this from all angles—we have the big numbers with Ford and GE, where you're talking thousands of jobs and hundreds of jobs. That's on one end. On the other end, you have the small 20 here, 30 there, 40 there, 50 there," he says. "If you actually look at our job creation in the city, most people are employed by small businesses. Though it doesn't look like a lot, 20 here or 30 there, when you add it up, it is a significant number of jobs.Poynter adds that hundreds of jobs have been added at Ford and GE recently. Since April, federal statistics show that roughly six thousand jobs have been added to the regional economy.