Ohio’s jobless rate slowly inching downward

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Ohio’s job­less rate showed slow and steady improve­ment in Decem­ber, state offi­cials reported Friday.

The state’s sea­son­ally adjusted unem­ploy­ment rate for Decem­ber was 6.7 per­cent — down slightly from 6.8 per­cent in Novem­ber and 6.9 per­cent in Octo­ber, the Ohio Depart­ment of Jobs and Fam­ily Ser­vices said.

It’s the low­est since July 2008, when the rate was 6.6 per­cent. The rate reached a high of 10.6 per­cent for sev­eral months in 2009 and early 2010.

Offi­cials said the state’s econ­omy is improv­ing slowly, and it will take time for a full recov­ery. Still, Ohio’s unem­ploy­ment rate for Decem­ber was well below the national aver­age of 7.8 per­cent, which was unchanged from Novem­ber. Ohio’s unem­ploy­ment rate has improved from 7.9 per­cent in Decem­ber 2011.

The num­ber of unem­ployed in Ohio has decreased 70,000 in the past 12 months.

The state agency reported 388,000 peo­ple out of work last month, down from 391,000 the pre­vi­ous month. Mean­while, the state’s non-farm wage and salary employ­ment decreased 9,400 over the last month, accord­ing to the lat­est busi­ness estab­lish­ment sur­vey by the U.S. Depart­ment of Labor, in con­junc­tion with the state agency.

Ohio gained about 1,000 jobs in goods-producing indus­tries in Decem­ber, and man­u­fac­tur­ing added 900. Con­struc­tion lost 100 jobs, and min­ing and log­ging remained unchanged from the pre­vi­ous month. Job losses were seen in service-producing industries.

The agency said Ohio has gained 90,700 non-farm jobs between Decem­ber 2011 and the end of last month. Service-providing indus­tries added 70,100 jobs over that period.

Posted by AP News on Jan 18 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.