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Valley unemployment rate drops to 5.9 percent in June
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning Valley unemployment rate continued to remain below the 2014 rate in June.
In June, the Valley’s nonseasonally adjusted jobless rate was 5.9 percent compared with 6.7 percent in June 2014, according to data released Tuesday by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
“The bottom line in this deluge of figures is that Ohio and the Mahoning Valley continue to recover from the Great Recession,” said George Zeller, a Cleveland-based economist. “But the rate of recovery both in Ohio and in the Valley continues to be too slow to enable these many thousands of workers to find a new job, since our growth rate remains continuously too slow and below the national average.”
The number of unemployed went down from 17,000 in June 2014 to 14,900 in June 2015. Employment went up from 235,700 in June 2014 to 237,100 in June 2015.
But the civilian labor force dropped from 253,000 in June 2014 to 252,000 last month.
Mekael Teshome, a PNC Bank economist, said the drop is consistent with demographic shifts in Ohio and the nation.
Due to a drop in the labor force, the year-over-year decline in local unemployment is “not entirely for the right reasons,” he added, but the economy still is making progress within those conditions.
In Mahoning County, the unemployment rate last month was 5.8 percent, down 0.8 percent from June 2014. There were 6,300 unemployed and 102,100 employed in the county last month.
In Trumbull County, the unemployment rate last month was 6.2 percent compared with 7.1 percent last June. A total of 5,700 were unemployed, and 87,400 were employed.
Columbiana County also saw a decrease in unemployment from last year with a rate of 5.6 percent compared with 6.4 percent last year. A total of 2,800 were unemployed, and 47,600 were employed.
Ohio’s unemployment rate was 5.2 percent last month, which did not change from May.
The U.S. unemployment rate was 5.3 percent last month, compared with 5.5 percent in May.