COLUMBUS – Ohio’s unemployment rate in April was 5.0 percent, down from 5.1 percent in March, and unchanged from one year ago, according to data released Friday morning by the state.
The national rate made a similar move, from 4.5 percent in March to 4.4 percent last month. That’s lower than it was at this time last year.
Employers shed 5,700 jobs last month, according to a survey of businesses by the U.S. Department of Labor and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
The construction and manufacturing sectors lost a combined 13,200 jobs, wiping out gains in the service sector, including large additions of jobs in professional and business services and leisure and hospitality. Three thousand jobs were also lost in state and federal government.
The state has added 35,900 jobs in the past year, powered by over 39,000 jobs in the service sector, but critics will say that job growth is still weak compared to the nation as a whole, a sign that Ohio’s economy is still recovering from the recession at a sluggish pace.
Although the state has recovered 253,000 jobs since the recession’s nadir in 2010, the number of working Ohioans still falls 158,000 short of the 5.7 million in 2007. The number of unemployed workers, at 288,000, is less than half the number in 2009, when the unemployment rates was 10.3 percent, but over 100,000 workers have also disappeared from the labor force, either leaving the state, retiring or otherwise giving up the search for jobs.
The state’s labor force has increased by 97,000 since November, indicating increased confidence among unemployed workers, but is 210,000 short of the 5.9 million employed and available workers at the beginning of 2007, before the recessions officially began.