In January, the Associated Press reported that Ohio’s unemployment rate stood at 10.9% as of December 2009. That rate has fallen slightly in the six months or so since that news article, standing now at 10.7% according to the Dayton Daily News.
The number of unemployed workers in May dropped to 641,000 from 652,000 in April. During the past 12 months, the number of unemployed has gone up by 22,000 from 619,000. The May 2009 unemployment rate was 10.3 percent.
Anyone looking to call this an improvement needs to explain that thinking, because these are more than likely seasonal jobs that either have disappeared or will disappear.
For my home town of Cleveland, the unemployment rate is even worse: 17.1 percent according to Simply Cleveland. (In the interests of fuller disclosure, I have been unemployed since at least December of 2007, existing on financial aid and what food I can get from food pantries.)
Cleveland has an unemployment rate of 17.1%, compared the national average of 6.9%.
According to our Cleveland Trends data, the number of Cleveland, Ohio jobs has decreased by 28% since November 2008.