It was reported late last week that Ohio lost 1,500 jobs in September as the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.2%, up from 4.1% in August. This as the U.S. jobless rate fell to 3.5%. Key points from the latest unemployment report include:

• Ohio was just one of four states in which the unemployment rate increased.
• The most job losses were state government (-1,800), construction (-1,700), and manufacturing (-1,400). Manufacturing still supplies more than 700,000 jobs in Ohio.
• There were 243,000 unemployed individuals across Ohio. (Of course, the unemployment rate is different from Ohio’s labor force participation rate.)

Despite the uptick, the state’s September unemployment rate was still better than the 4.6% from a year earlier. 10/21/2019