State: May unemployment rate drops again

Staff/wire report

columbus

The state says Ohio’s unemployment rate dropped again in May.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services said Friday the seasonally adjusted rate in May was 5.5 percent, which was down from 5.7 percent in March and 6.1 percent in April.

It’s the state’s lowest jobless rate in seven years.

Ohio’s rate remains below the national rate, which was 6.3 percent in April and May.

The number of workers unemployed in Ohio in May was 317,000, down 11,000 from 328,000 in April. The number of unemployed has decreased by 108,000 in the past 12 months from 425,000. The May unemployment rate for Ohio was down from 7.4 percent in May 2013.

“The new May 2014 data find that Ohio is still recovering from both the 2000s recession and the 2007 Great Recession,” Cleveland economist George Zeller said in a statement. “But Ohio’s growth remains too slow, and the gap between the Ohio job-growth rate and the U.S. job-growth rate widened once again in May.”

Ohio’s non-agricultural wage and salary employment increased 2,900 over the month, from a revised 5,295,400 in April to 5,298,300 in May.

There was a decline in the labor force of 14,000, which Zeller said leads the unemployment estimate to be less reliable than the employment estimate.

“That was the third month in a row that the labor force dropped,” Zeller said. “That is the reason why the unemployment has appeared to have gone down.”

Zeller believes we are still having a slow growth, but it is positive to have a gain of 2,900 jobs.

The local unemployment numbers come out Tuesday.