Unemployment Ohio

For every positive sign on Ohio’s job front, there’s another equally discouraging indicator showing that the state’s labor market remains mired in a 10-year recession.

Take data released Thursday regarding new unemployment claims. The latest four-week moving average, during the first week of September, showed that the number of first-time claims in Ohio was 11,157, a drop of 29 percent from a year earlier.

The decline continues a pattern that began at the end of last year, said George Zeller, an economist who has done work for local governments in the Cleveland area.

But looking back further, claims are running at nearly twice the rate of 1999, when the state last achieved significant job growth. And the rate is about a third higher than the reading in August 2000 on the eve of a recession, he said.

“The fact is that we’re better than last year,” he said. “But, on the other hand, (last year) was the worst year in decades. Does it mean the economy is growing again? Definitely not.”

Zeller said that when the state is achieving solid job growth, new unemployment claims should total about 6,000 a week.

Bill LaFayette, the Columbus Chamber’s vice president for economic analysis, agrees with Zeller that job growth has been weak coming out of the recession.

“We are recovering,” he said. “We are not recovered.”

Nationally, economic growth slowed during the summer. Projections foresee the economy picking up in 2011, but not by much.

“It will generate jobs,” LaFayette said. “It won’t generate a lot of jobs.”

Zeller figures that even the estimates that Ohio has created 48,400 jobs in the first seven months of this year will be revised lower.

“I’m not sure Ohio has gained any jobs this year,” he said.

Ohio’s jobs picture has been bleak for a decade. Even when the economy was stronger, job creation in the state was mostly flat.

The number of workers in Ohio topped 5.6 million in 2001. Today, it is barely 5 million.

Since the recession began in December 2007, Ohio has lost 376,500 jobs, or 6.9 percent of its total.

July was the first month in 14 years in which job creation in Ohio topped the national average on a percentage basis, a preliminary figure that Zeller fears will be revised lower.

Nearly every part of the state has been hurt by job losses, even Ohio’s most-rapidly growing counties.

Zeller said 82 of Ohio’s 88 counties have levels of unemployment claims exceeding their 1999 job-growth levels.

The six exceptions are rural counties in northwestern and southeastern Ohio.

The six counties with the worst elevated levels are Delaware and Union counties in central Ohio, Warren and Butler counties near Cincinnati, Medina County near Cleveland and Paulding County in northwestern Ohio. All except Paulding are growing suburban counties that have been hurt by job losses in nearby urban areas, Zeller said.

Columbus has been the hardest-hit city in terms of elevated new unemployment claims, followed by Cincinnati.

LaFayette has said that manufacturing employment in central Ohio has been weak compared with other parts of the state. Areas such as Cleveland, Akron and Toledo have reported growth in manufacturing employment exceeding the national average.

Zeller compared the overall decline in new unemployment claims to a college football team that kicks a field goal to cut the other team’s lead from 42-0 to 42-3.

Yes, the score is an improvement, he said. “But we’re still losing.”