COLUMBUS – Ohio’s unemployment rate increased for the third straight month in July as more people entered the workforce and found jobs due to the rebounding economy.
The jobless rate last month was 5.4%, up from 5.2% in June and employers added more than 19,000 jobs (see below). The number of Ohioans who were working in July increased from a revised 5.32 million in June to 5.34 million.
The number of unemployed workers also grew, by 10,000, to 301,000, up from 291,000, though the number of Ohioans who were out of work has declined by 235,000 since the early weeks of the state’s reopening, in July 2020, when 536,000 people were unemployed and the unemployment rate 9.3%
The U.S. unemployment rate for July was also 5.4%, down from 5.9% in June, and down from 10.2% in July 2020.
The labor force participation rate in Ohio grew from 60.2% of the available work force in June to 60.5% last month.
Ohio has recovered approximately more than 600,000 of the jobs that were lost at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March and April but there are still 260,000 fewer Ohioans working than there were in February 2020.
Recent gains have been powered by hiring in leisure and hospitality, service, transportation, utilities and manufacturing. They were offset in part by losses in the state and local government sectors.