The number of unemployed people rose last month to 273,000, up from 271,000, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services said.
Still, the jobs situation has improved in the past year dramatically. The number of unemployed Ohioans has fallen by 636,000 in the past year from 909,000, the state noted.
Ben Ayers, senior economist at Nationwide, noted that “labor supply shortages” may well be holding back hiring for many Ohio businesses, mirroring the situation at the national level.
“Job gains should accelerate in coming months as consumer activity surges post-pandemic, especially among the services industries that were hardest hit over the past year,” Ayers said in an email.
He noted as well that Ohio has gained just a little over 30,000 jobs through the first four months in 2021 as employers are having growing difficulty finding workers. To help address the situation, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said last week that the state will opt out of receiving federal enhanced “unemployment benefits.
“That is no longer our only tool in this fight,” DeWine said last week. “This assistance was always intended to be temporary.”
The April unemployment rate for Ohio last year was 16.4%.
Meanwhile, the national unemployment rate for April was 6.1%, up from 6% in March and down from 14.8% in April 2020.
In April, the labor force participation rate in Ohio was 62.3%, up from 62.1% in March 2021 and up from 59.8% in April 2020.
During the same period, the national labor force participation rate was 61.7%, up from 61.5% last month and up from 60.2% one year ago.
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