Ohio jobless rate falls to 7.7% in Jan.

Staff/wire reports

COLUMBUS

Ohio’s unemployment rate went down for the third month in a row in January thanks to continued strength in the state’s health-care sector.

Joblessness fell to 7.7 percent in January, down from an adjusted 7.9 percent in December, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services said Friday.

Payrolls outside of farms rose 32,800 over the past month, the state said. The positive news comes amid a less-encouraging trend that finds the state’s overall payroll shrinking, from 458,000 in December to 447,000 in January.

Family-services spokesman Ben Johnson says the labor-market shrinkage includes people who took themselves out of the work force and adjustments based on recent revised census figures.

The leisure and hospitality industries added 6,800 positions, and education and health services added 6,000.

Meanwhile, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Labor Market Information revised job estimates for 2011. Two months alone — September and July — had downward job revisions of more than 100,000 jobs.

“These massive revisions obscure and overshadow the substance of the January 2012 estimates that were released today,” said Cleveland-based economist George Zeller. “They mean that the job losses in Ohio have been previously underestimated every month during the entire 2007-2009 national recession and even in months before that.”