The state’s unemployment rate dropped in the last month, and is now below the national average. But not everyone is looking at jobs numbers in the same way.
Statehouse correspondent Karen Kasler reports.
The state’s jobless rate for February is 6.5%, a drop from January’s 6.9% and at its lowest rate since June 2008. Angela Terez with the state’s Job and Family Services agency says it’s hard to read too much into one month’s data.
“But the news in February was good – the unemployment rate was down. Our experts believe that the economy is slowly strengthening and that it will continue to grow.”
But a progressive leaning research group says they’re looking at other data that shows Ohio lost 4,600 jobs between January and February. Hannah Halbert is with Policy Matters Ohio.
“Over the last 12 months, Ohio jobs have increased by only 1% and that’s slightly below the national average performance of 1.6%.”
The Kasich administration is also noting a federal labor report ranked Ohio second in the country in job growth in January, which shows there is a lot of data on employment, and also many ways to interpret it.