VIRUS TAKING TOLL ON STATE’S ECONOMY

Signs are clear that damage is immediate and only just beginning.

As Ohio started its first day under a stay-at-home order, evidence mounted by the hour that the coronavirus outbreak is taking a catastrophic toll on the state’s economy.

Tracking the rapidly spreading damage is difficult, but signs are clear that the economic impact has been immediate and is just beginning.

In the first five days of last week, 139,468 Ohioans applied for unemployment help. (The state has since stopped releasing the figures on a daily basis.)

In another indication, the California employee-scheduling company Homebase calculates that 40% of the 3,500 small to midsize Ohio businesses it serves have closed since March 14.

The impact on individual workers is more dramatic: 54% of the 27,000 employees tracked by Homebase have lost their jobs in the past 10 days.

Those figures were compiled before the state’s stay-at-home order took effect at 11:59 p.m. Monday. Manufacturers were so concerned about the order that an Ohio Manufacturers Association conference call on Monday hit its limit of 1,000 callers within moments.

Some economists, including Ned Hill of Ohio State University and Michael Hicks of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, expect the outbreak to push unemployment levels quickly into the double digits. “My guess is the pandemic will peak in late April or early May, and have a long tail, which means we will have been in recession for March, April, May and June,” Hill said.

“The likelihood of being in recession another three to six months is quite reasonable, and unemployment will get scary high.”

Restaurant, bar, retail, hotel, entertainment and event businesses have been hit hardest. John Barker, president of the Ohio Restaurant Association, described the damage as “swift and dramatic.”

Restaurants that rely mostly on dine-in services are finding it nearly impossible to stay open. The hotel industry was also hit “first and worst,” said Joe Savarise, executive director of the Ohio Hotel & Lodging Association. “It has been devastating to historic proportions,” Savarise said.

Occupancy levels in Ohio hotels dropped below 50% last week and some properties have fallen into single digits, he said.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association said last week that 18,700 hotel workers in Ohio had lost their jobs and another 78,000 hotel supplier jobs had