OH unemployment rate falls slightly, again, to 4.4 percent

Across the nation, unemployment rates fell in 32 states last month as employers added the most jobs of any month this year. The Buckeye State has also seen a slight decrease in the unemployment rate, which stands below the national rate, with a percentage of 4.4 in October, down from 4.5 % in September. In total, 20 states had unemployment rates significantly lower than the US figure of 5.0 percent, 12 states and the District of Columbia had measurably higher rates, and 18 states had rates that were not appreciably different from that of the nation.

The September report also showed OH had 254,000 unemployed in September, down 11,000 from 265,000 in August. The sectors with the largest job gains included professional and business services, health care and retail trade.

Cleveland-based economic analyst George Zeller noted that today’s statistics show the recovery was driven by a robust increase of 5,800 jobs in Manufacturing and another robust increase of 5,800 jobs in Construction.

In the Bay Area, San Mateo County had the lowest number of unemployed workers at 3.2 percent in October.

The US unemployment rate for October was 5 percent, down from 5.1 percent in September and down from 5.7 percent in October 2014.

Regional and state unemployment rates were little changed in October.

Despite the job gains, the state still is well below the 5.6 million jobs it had in 2000. That’s a historically low level that may help push up pay in the coming months. The low was in 2009, when 5,227,000 people were counted as working in OH and the jobless rate was 10.8 percent. “Three full years of continuous sub-par and too slow job growth in OH still leaves many thousands of suffering OH workers with no job and no income”.

According to Zeller, the annual rate of job growth in OH was 1.43 percent after last month, compared to 1.94 percent for the United States. The biggest job gains occurred in California, which added 41,200, followed by Florida, with 35,200.