“Ohio’s labor market continued to weaken in June,” Douglas Lumpkin, ODJFS director, said in a press release. Significant job losses in both the goods-producing and service-providing industries led to an increase in the unemployment rate to 11.1 percent.
The state’s nonfarm wage and salary employment decreased 33,000 over the month, from 5,133,200 in May to 5,100,200 in June.
The number of unemployed workers, however, increased to 662,000, up from 647,000 in May.
During the past 12 months, the number of Ohioans out of work has climbed by 279,000 from 383,000.
In June 2008 the jobless rate was 6.4 percent. The unemployment rate hadn’t been above 11 percent since an 11.2 percent rate in August 1983. The June jobless rate marked the third straight month the rate has been in double digits .
The national unemployment rate in June was 9.5 percent, up from May’s 9.4 percent rate.
In the Dayton area, Veronica Adkins, Kettering branch manager for Spherion, a recruiting and staffing company, said her office is seeing a lot of people who worked for Delphi and General Motors.
Usually at this time of the year her company sees lots of requests for seasonal employment but that’s changed, said Adkins.
“We’re not seeing seasonal orders,” she said. Companies are doing more with less in areas of seasonal employment such as landscaping and warehouse work, she said.
Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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