COLUMBUS – Ohio’s unemployment rate remain unchanged for the third consecutive month in September, at 5.4%, as the latest COVID-19 surge waned and students returned to classrooms.
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Employers added 9,900 jobs and the number of Ohioans on the unemployment rolls dropped by 2,000 amid an uptick in hiring and an increase in the number of vaccinated Ohioans, which may have headed off another pandemic-related economic slowdown.
The state Department of Job and Family Services reported Friday that 5.36 million Ohioans were working in September. Ohio has added jobs during three of the last four months and during eight months so far in 2021.
The labor force participation rate in Ohio increased to 61.1%, from 60.8% in August and many of those workers found jobs, according to the state’s data.
The state has added 210,000 jobs in the last 12 months but still has failed to regain 243,000 of the nearly 1 million jobs lost in the opening weeks of the pandemic in the spring of 2020.
Job gains in construction last month outpaced losses in manufacturing and gains in trade, transportation, and utilities compensated for losses in other areas of the service sector. Local and government employment increased by 15,500 jobs as schools and colleges reopened.