Mahoning Valley’s unemployment rate 7.2 percent in January

Trumbull jobless rate expected to rise sharply

By Amanda Tonoli

atonoli@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

While Trumbull County’s unemployment rate decreased from 8.6 percent to 7.7 percent from January 2018 to January of this year, things are about to get much worse, one analyst said.

Trumbull County’s unemployment rate – already the 17th highest in the state – is expected to change after last week’s idling of the GM Lordstown Complex.

“Overall, the Lordstown GM closure is a massive disaster for both the Valley and for Northeast Ohio as a whole,” said economic research analyst George Zeller of Cleveland.

Zeller said there are a number of technicalities that influence the January unemployment estimates.

“January 2019 was the 26th-consecutive month that Ohio’s estimated unemployment rate was higher than the USA unemployment rate,” he said. “Ohio’s rate seasonally adjusted was 4.7 percent, while the USA rate was 4 percent. This is clearly not a one-month fluke, since we have seen this situation for every month during more than two years now. December 2018 figures on Ohio jobs were revised downward by a large amount, accounting for all of the announced employment gain in January 2019. So we had a dismal 2018, which took place statewide prior to the Lordstown layoffs.”

Zeller expects a big change when the employment and job data for March is released.

“Despite all of these technicalities, there was a year-over-year January 2018 to January 2019 unemployment increase in Mahoning County. Trumbull and Columbiana counties showed small declines,” he said. “... Now, there were some declines in employed workers at Lordstown in months prior to March 2019 as some workers moved out of the Valley to GM plants located elsewhere in Ohio or in other states.”

In Mahoning County, the January unemployment rate fell from 8.2 percent to 7.2 percent. Mahoning County ranked 22nd in the state for highest unemployment rate.

In Columbiana County, the January unemployment rate was 6.5 percent, down from 6.6 percent in January 2018. It ranked 32nd in the state for highest unemployment rate.

The Mahoning Valley’s nonseasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 7.2 percent in January from January 2018’s rate of 8.1 percent, according to figures recently released by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

While the number of unemployed people in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties fell from 19,100 in January 2018 to 17,200 in January 2019, the number of employed people rose from 218,400 to 221,300, and the civilian labor force stayed the same at 238,000.

In the city of Youngstown, the unemployment rate was 8.1 percent in January, a decrease from 9.1 percent the previous January.

There are opportunities for former Lordstown workers to get job assistance.

Arthur Daly, vice president of Eastern Gateway Community College, addressed Austintown Township trustees this week on the college’s “Lordstown initiative,” which offers free college tuition to displaced union workers from the recently idled Lordstown plant or any of its suppliers.

“We want to make sure that everyone who has been impacted by the GM decision can have an opportunity to go to college for free,” Daly said.