COLUMBUS – The number of Ohioans filing initial jobless claims inched upward in the last week of 2020 after two straight weeks of declines, indicating the state’s recovery from the economic shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic remains stalled.
The 29,709 initial claims for unemployment benefits during the week that ended on Jan. 2 was 0.3% higher than the week before but was 18% lower than the number filed during the first week of December 2020, according to statistics the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services reported to the U.S. Department of Labor Thursday. The number was 89% lower than the number of first-time claims filed during the peak of the shutdown in March.
The 2.1 million initial jobless claims filed in Ohio over the 42 weeks of the pandemic is more than the combined total of those filed during the last five years.
Ohioans filed 274,460 continued jobless claims last week, virtually unchanged from the week before but was only about two-thirds as high as the peak number last year.
The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid fell slightly to 787,000, evidence of a job market stumbling in the face of the viral pandemic.
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The state reported 7,814 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, bringing the total number of Ohioans infected since the onset of the pandemic to 742,817 and the 121 deaths reported raised the toll to 9,368.
There were 454 COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals Wednesday. The 4,319 patients currently hospitalized with the virus is one-and-a-half times as many as on Nov. 1. They are occupying 15.6% of the state’s total capacity of inpatient beds.
A total of 40,104 Ohioans have been hospitalized for treatment for the coronavirus.
The seven-day positivity rate is 14.8%.
The state says 199,801 people have received the first of two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, representing 1.71% of the state’s total population.