Unemployment rate remains high in state

By GRACE WYLER

gwyler@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Ohio’s unemployment rate remained high in April despite the addition of 37,000 jobs in the state last month.

State unemployment was 10.9 percent in April 2010, up from 10 percent a year earlier, the state reported Friday.

Unemployment decreased marginally from 11 percent in March, the state’s highest unemployment rate since September 1983. The unemployment rate has remained between 10.8 percent and 11 percent in 2010.

“We can take this to mean that the economy has bottomed out and is starting to recover,” said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. “We are hopeful that the unemployment rate will continue to trend down.”

National unemploy-ment in April was 9.9 percent, a 1 percent increase from the same period in 2009.

The total work force in Ohio rose by 37,300 between April and March, the largest month-over-month increase in the country, the state reported.

The state has gained 53,000 jobs since January 2010, Johnson said, adding, “More people are getting out and starting to look for work.”

Ohio has lost 381,200 jobs — or 7 percent of the state’s employment — since the recession began in December 2007, Cleveland economist George Zellers said in a recent report.

“This staggering, continued large losses of Ohio’s employment is an ongoing catastrophe,” Zellers said in a statement. “It will clearly take a long time to generate additional growth of 381,200 jobs in Ohio.”