The state’s jobless rate has fallen to 4.7 percent, its lowest level since last March. Statehouse correspondent Karen Kasler reports.
January’s unemployment rate went down 0.2 of a point from December’s revised rate of 4.9 percent. Hannah Halbert from the progressive think tank Policy Matters Ohio says that’s good news – with a caveat.
“It certainly suggests that the Ohio economy is starting to edge closer to full employment. But when we look at the numbers going into that rate, we see that there’s a lot of slack and a lot of work that still needs to be done.”
Halbert says the state’s labor force is still more than 3.5 percent smaller than it was when the recession started a decade ago. And the state’s jobless rate is still more than a half a point higher than the national unemployment rate of 4.1 percent.
