The November 2013 Ohio By the Numbers report shows a rough month for the private sector with 12,600 private sector jobs lost. This loss pushed down Ohio’s private sector job growth ranking since 2010 from 26th in October to 34th in November.

Ohio’s unemployment rate was at 7.4 percent, which was nearly half of a percent higher than the national average of 7.0 percent. One bright spot in November was a close to 7,000 person increase in Ohio’s labor force, which contributed to a net Ohio labor force increase since the beginning of the year of around 5,500 people. This comes after 32 consecutive months (between March 2010 and December 2012) of decreases–resulting in a total reduction of Ohio’s labor force by 158,000 people over that time period. Overall, the labor force in Ohio has shrunk by over 230,000 workers from its peak of 5.97 million people in December 2006. 

Overall highlights from the report:

• Ohio lost 12,600 private sector jobs in November, but gained 600 government jobs;
   
• Ohio dropped from 26th to 34th nationally in terms of private sector job growth since January 2010, growing at a 5.4 percent rate;
   
• Ohio currently ranks 47th nationally for private sector job growth since January of 1990, growing at 7.8 percent (top ranked Utah grew 92.4 percent over the same time span).

Within individual industry sectors, Professional and Business Services, Education and Health Services, and Leisure and Hospitality continue to have more people employed today than in either 1990 or 2000. Meanwhile, Mining and Logging, Construction, Manufacturing, and Information sectors have fewer jobs today than in 1990 or 2000.

The report shows that Forced Union states (which includes Ohio and many of its neighbors–with the exceptions of Indiana, which became a Worker Freedom state in February of 2012, and Michigan, whose recent Worker Freedom law became effective at the end of March 2013) had a private sector growth rate far below Worker Freedom states.

Between 1990 and January of 2012, Worker Freedom states’ private sector jobs grew at a 38 percent rate vs. only 13 percent for Forced Union states (11.8 million vs. 8 million). Since Indiana became a Worker Freedom state in February 2012, Worker Freedom states’ private sector jobs grew at a rate of 3.9 percent vs. 2.7 percent for Forced Union states.