The state鈥檚 jobless rate has fallen to 4.7 percent, its lowest level since last March.
January鈥檚 unemployment rate from December鈥檚 revised rate of 4.9 percent. Hannah Halbert from the progressive think tank Policy Matters Ohio says that鈥檚 good news 鈥� but with a caveat. 鈥淚t certainly suggests that the Ohio economy is starting to edge closer to full employment. But when we look at the numbers going into that rate, we see that there鈥檚 a lot of slack and a lot of work that still needs to be done,鈥� Halbert said.
Halbert says the state鈥檚 labor force is still more than three and a half percent smaller than it was when the recession started a decade ago. And the state鈥檚 jobless rate is still more than a half a point higher than the national unemployment rate of 4.1 percent.
