COLUMBUS – Ohio’s unemployment rate ticked up to 4.7 percent in December from 4.5 percent in November, its second straight monthly increase, as the number of unemployed workers grew to its largest level since mid-summer.
The number of unemployed Ohioans was up 14,000 from 255,000 in November to 269,000 in December, the highest number since July, according to data released by the state Department of Job and Family Services Friday morning.
Some policy groups have pointed out that job growth in Ohio since the recession has lagged behind that of the rest of the country but December’s addition of over 15,000 jobs was hailed as an encouraging trend.
“Three months of decent job growth is a welcome departure from the variability we’ve seen most of the year. Until October, the gains and losses in 2015 left our overall growth very low, with only 10,700 jobs added between January and September,” said Hannah Halbert, workforce researcher with Policy Matters Ohio.
The 12 recessions since 1945 have taken a higher toll Ohio employment because of the state’s longtime reliance on manufacturing, though employment during the expansions that followed used to grow at least as strongly as average, making up for the recession losses, Regionomics founder Bill LaFayette wrote in a 2014 report on Ohio’s economy.
Since the 1970s, as manufacturing in the North and Midwest declined, Ohio’s employment growth has been much less than average during the expansions, LaFayette said.
The state’s labor force also grew to its highest level since June, an indication that more people were looking for work in December.
The jobless rate in central Ohio was 3.9 percent in November.
The U.S. unemployment rate for December was 5.0 percent, unchanged from November and down from 5.6 percent in December 2014.