COLUMBUS – Ohio’s unemployment rate remained steady for the fourth month in a row at 4.2 percent in December as employers added 9,800 jobs.
The number of Ohioans who reported they were working increased from a revised 5.600 million in November to 5.610 million in December 2019, according to data released Friday by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
The growth was slower than the rate in November and Ohio employers were already adding jobs half as fast as they did in 2018, which was one of the worst years for job growth since the end of the 2007 recession, Hannah Halbert, project director with Policy Matters Ohio, said.
Halbert says the state’s 0.4 percent growth rate was lagging behind the nation’s 1.4 percent through the first 11 months of the year.
The number of workers unemployed in Ohio in December was 243,000, down 4,000 from 247,000 in November. The number of unemployed has decreased by 24,000 over the past year.
The December unemployment rate for Ohio declined from 4.6 percent in December 2018 as employers added 27,300 jobs.
The U.S. unemployment rate for December was 3.5 percent, unchanged from November and down from 3.9 percent in December 2018.
The state added 4,500 jobs in construction and manufacturing, along with 6,000 jobs in the service sector, mostly in educational and health services and financial activities.
The job gains for the year were powered entirely by the service sector, which added 35,400 jobs, compensating for the nearly 11,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing, construction and other segments of the goods-producing sector.