Jobs return more slowly to Ohio cities

Columbus and Franklin County have borne the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic when it comes to the unemployment rate for central Ohio.

The story is similar for Ohio’s other big cities.

The jobless rate for Columbus was 9.6% in July, according to state jobs data released Tuesday. For Franklin County, the rate was 9%, the highest in the 10-county central Ohio region.

The rate for the metro area was 8.2% in July.

Because Franklin is the most populous county in the metro area, it tends to be the driver for the region’s unemployment rate. Usually, the rate for the city and the county are close to the average for the 10-county metro area.

“(July numbers are) indicating that outlying counties are driving the rate down,’’ said economist Bill Lafayette, owner of economic consulting firm Regionomics.

Rates also are high in Ohio’s other big cities: Cleveland is at 17%; Youngstown, 14.3%; Dayton, 12.6%; Toledo, 12.4%; Akron, 11.6%; and Cincinnati, 10.9%.

While better than in June, the rates suggest the closing of restaurants, bars and other businesses have hurt the state’s cities more than other parts of Ohio.

Rates did fall in all 88 Ohio counties and all of the state’s metro areas in July. The Cincinnati metro area had

A Franklin County grand jury originally indicted Neubig in October 2018 as a result of an investigation by the Ohio attorney general’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Ohio Department of Commerce’s Division of Securities.

The fraud involved Neubig’s sale of investments in Capture Educational Consulting Services, Inc., a New Albany-based company of which Neubig is founder and CEO. The company’s address is listed at Innovate New Albany, a small business incubator at 8000 Walton Parkway, just north of Route 161.

Capture Educational developed and sold Schedulesmart software to school systems that enable them to use data analytics from their electronic student information such as grades and test results to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of scheduling student classes and improve student, teacher and administrative performance, according to company materials and a release from Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’brien’s office.

Neubig was convicted for making false and misleading statements to investors in Ohio and California, including several angel investment funds that provide seed money to small tech business startups.

the lowest rate last month at 7.8%, and Columbus was next. Cleveland had the highest rate at 11.7%. Holmes County in northeastern Ohio had the lowest rate, at 4.1%.

One county in central Ohio, Union, was among five in Ohio with unemployment rates below 6% in July. Union’s rate was 5.9%.

Cuyahoga County’s rate of 12.9% was the highest in the state.

As was the case when statewide unemployment data were released Friday, the unemployment rates in the metro areas and counties fell, in part, because large numbers of workers dropped out of the labor force.

In Columbus, for example, the labor force fell by about 17,000 in July compared with June. In Cleveland, it was about 40,000.

The state jobs data showed Columbus added 7,100 jobs in July and now has gotten back about 60,000 jobs in the past three months.

Even with those gains, the region has about 100,000 fewer jobs than a year ago, and Lafayette said jobs are coming back in central Ohio at a slower rate than national average.

“We’d be dancing in the street if this were a normal year,” he said of the recent job gains in the region.

After Union County, Delaware and Madison counties had the next lowest unemployment rate in the region at 6.2%.

That was followed by 7% in Morrow County, 7.2% in Pickaway County, 7.3% in Hocking County, 7.4% in Licking County, 7.5% in Fairfield County, and 8.4% in Perry County. mawilliams@dispatch.com @Bizmarkwilliams