According to the data released by the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services on March 11, the unemployment rate for Williams County continues to see improvement and has come down to 6.8% in January from 7.0% in December of 2013. This saw Williams County’s state ranking improving from 54th to 64th over the same time span. The decrease also reflects improvements seen both statewide, which saw unemployment falling from 7.1% in December 2013 to 6.9% in January, and nationally, where rates improved from 6.7% to 6.6%. Unfortunately the same still does not hold true for Fulton County, which has seen a recent climbing of the unemployment rate. Fulton County’s unemployment rate jumped another 1.3% over the months of December and January, climbing from 7.3% to 8.6% over that time span and moving the county down the state rankings from 36th to 28th.
Statewide unemployment ranged from a low of 4.4% in Mercer County to a high of 15.0% in Monroe County. Counties with the lowest rates included Mercer (4.4%), Holmes (4.8%), Delaware (4.9%), Auglaize (5.0%), and Union (5.5%). Counties with the highest rates included Monroe (15.0%), Meigs (13.2%), Morgan (13.2%), Pike (13.1%), Adams (12.6%), Huron (12.4%) and Ottawa (12.1%).
All in all Ohio gained 16,000 jobs from December to January and a total of 26,000 over the last twelve months with the statewide unemployment rate improving from 7.3% in January 2013 to the current rate of 6.9% in January 2014.
All areas of unemployment saw improvement over the last month. The goods-producing industry saw an increase of 10,900 jobs with construction (+8000), manufacturing (+2400) and mining and logging (+500) all seeing new jobs. The private service-producing sector saw an addition of 3300 jobs over the last month with increases in professional and business services (+5900); leisure and hospitality (+3400); and financial activities (+1100) outweighing losses in trade, transportation, and utilities (-5200), information (-1000), educational and health services (-600), and other services (-300). Government jobs increased by 2500 with local (+2900) and state (+600) increases outweighing the loss of federal jobs (-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.