2016 Ohio job growth sluggish

Job creation in Ohio has slowed to a crawl.

The state added just 33,200 jobs last year, the poorest performance since it lost nearly 200,000 jobs in 2009 during the depths of the recession.

The news comes from employment data released

Friday by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services that included revisions for the past three years.

The high-water mark since the recession ended was in 2014 when the state added 97,100 jobs.

The revised data showed 18,700 fewer jobs were created last year than first thought, and there were 16,800 fewer jobs in 2015.

This year isn’t off to a great start, either, with the state losing 2,100 jobs in January. But the jobless rate did hold steady for the fourth straight month at 5 percent. The number of unemployed workers rose by 3,000 to 287,000.

The slower job creation could simply be a matter of the labor pool running low after several years of growth coupled with the state’s slow population growth, said Mike Hicks, a Ball State University economist.

“There’s no abundant pool of workers just sitting around. ... Everybody who wants a job is pretty much employed now,” he said.

Ohio has about 300,000 fewer workers than it did 10 years ago, according to state data.

Part of that stems from older workers retiring, but part of it reflects frustrated people who have given up looking for work.

People who aren’t working would need a reason to try for work again — something such as higher wages, Hicks said. Otherwise, potential workers are more likely to stay home, for example, to care for children.

“Wage growth has been slow, and as long as costs (such as child care) continue to grow, it is natural for the labor force to shrink,” he said.

The slowdown in

“There’s no abundant pool of workers just sitting around. ... Everybody who wants a job is pretty much employed now.”

—Ball State University economist Mike Hicks

hiring could reflect a business cycle that is aging, said Mark Vitner, a Wells Fargo & Co. managing director and senior economist.

Even though job gains are diminishing, the growth that has been occurring is across several sectors, including manufacturing, health care, construction and finance.

“Overall, growth is pretty sluggish,” he said. “Still, there seems to be pretty good breadth.”

Vitner said people need an incentive like a cut in federal income taxes to get them off the sidelines.

“We need something like a policy change to bring more people into the workforce in a big way,” he said.

Because of the mild winter, construction added 7,800 workers in January, the most of any sector, according to the state. The finance sector added 4,500 jobs and manufacturing added 1,900 jobs.

The private education and health care sector shed 10,800 jobs, more jobs than any other sector in January, and the leisure and hospitality sector cut 4,400 jobs during the month. Both have been steady gainers over the past several years.