COLUMBUS – The number of Ohioans filing claims for unemployment benefits inched upward last week after two weeks of declines.
Ohioans filed 9,851 initial traditional unemployment claims last week, a 6.8% increase over the previous week, according to data the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services provided to the U.S. Department of Labor Thursday.
The 50,733 continued traditional unemployment claims filed during the week that ended on Oct. 9 was 2.9% more than the week before and the total number of traditional claims filed from Oct. 3-9, 2021 was 60,584 more than the previous week, a 3.5% increase.
The number of Americans applying for first-time benefits fell to its lowest level since the pandemic began, a sign the job market is still improving even as hiring has slowed across the nation in the past two months
Unemployment claims dropped 36,000 to 293,000, the second straight drop, and the smallest number of people to apply for benefits since March 2020, when the pandemic intensified, the Labor Department reported.