Recently released seasonally adjusted unemployment figures for the state of Ohio show unemployment rising slightly from 7.3% in August to 7.4% in September to 7.5% in October. Despite this rise, 74 of Ohio’s 88 counties saw declining rates over the last two months. Included among these is Fulton County who saw unemployment drop from 7.8% in September to 7.4% in October. Williams County saw no change in unemployment rates over the last month. Even with the unchanged rate, William County rose from 43rd ranked in the state to 45th while Fulton County rose from 32nd to 36th. Rankings are set with the highest unemployment ranking, still belonging to Meigs County, ranked first.
In total five counties continue to see rates of over 10.0%. Meigs (12.0%), Pile (11.9%), Monroe (11.6%), Scioto (11.2%), and Adams (10.3%) counties continue to struggle. On the reverse side of the scale, six Ohio counties saw rates at or below 5.2%. These include Mercer (4.3%), which has maintained the lowest unemployment rates in the state for some time, Holmes (4.7%), Geauga (5.0%), Auglaize (5.1%), Delaware (5.2%), and Union (5.2%) counties.
The national unemployment rate moved from 7.2% in September to 7.3% in October.
The vast majority of lost jobs continues to be government jobs which have declined by a total of 6300 across local, state, and federal positions. The vast majority of these losses occurred at the local level, which saw a decrease of 4300 jobs. In contrast, the fast growing job market for both the state and nation continues to be the private service providing sector which has seen an increase of 6400 jobs over the last month. Professional and business services saw a decline of 1200 jobs; education and health services lost another 600. The largest increases were seen in trade, transportation, and utilities (+3500), leisure and hospitality (+3000) and construction (+1000).
Ohioans wishing to learn more about unemployment benefits or who are in search of a job can visit www.ohiomeansjobs.com. This information in this article and the monthly statistical summaries it is based on are also available at http://jfs.ohio.gov/ocomm.