State and local officials say the delayed January 2013 unemployment figures for Marion County are puzzling and that they are unsure why they reflected such a drastic jump in the number of unemployed. Those figures, just released on Tuesday, March 12, show Marion County jumped to 9.0 percent from 7.2 percent in December 2012. The figures also show the number of unemployed increasing by 500 individuals.
Even with the large increase, local officials, pointing to a recent increase in hiring, are hopeful that this is just a small setback in the continued employment recovery in Marion.
Marion County’s unemployment rate was at its highest since February 2012 when it was 9.3 percent. While the unemployment rate locally has bounced around over the past 12 months, it has increased from a low of 6.8 percent in October 2012.
The increase (500) in the number of unemployed Marion residents represents the biggest month-to-month increase since November-to-December 2008 when it jumped by 800 and signaled the beginning of the recession’s impact on local jobs.
Roxanne Somerlot, Director of Marion County Job and Family Services, said the unemployment rate is never an exact accounting of the local situation, but acts more as a trend indicator. Still, she said she was expecting an increase of a few tenths of a percents and that the jump to 9.0 percent was very unexpected. She was not aware of any specific reason for the jump in unemployed other than the annual layoff of seasonal employees, which was higher than last year. She said local stores did much more seasonal hiring during the most recent holidays than they did last year.
Somerlot said that state officials also expressed puzzlement regarding the drastic increase for Marion. She said there was not a significant increase in new unemployment claims from December to January. There were also no single sources of significant layoffs affecting Marion residents.
“It sounds like it might be a number of factors that combined to push the rate up in January,” said Somerlot. She explained that state officials stress that more attention should be paid to the how the numbers are trending at the local level and less attention paid to the month-to-month figures.
“We’re still trending downward on a year-to-year comparison,” stated Somerlot, who said her office is seeing an increase in hiring on the local level. With that, she said she is hopeful that the unemployment rate for February and March will look better.
The rate for Marion County remains lower than a year ago when it sat at 9.5 percent. The yearly average for 2012 was 7.9 percent, down from 9.7 percent for 2011.
The unemployment rate for the State of Ohio for February 2013 was released last week and showed a jump higher. The local rates for February are expected later this month.
Marion County was not alone in higher unemployment rates. In fact, several surrounding counties saw larger rate increases.
County – Jan-13 – Dec-12 – Jan-12
Crawford – 10.0 – 7.8 – 11.1
Delaware – 5.8 – 4.3 – 6.0
Hardin – 8.5 – 6.3 – 9.3
Marion – 9.0 – 7.2 – 9.5
Morrow – 8.7 – 6.7 – 9.2
Union – 6.6 – 5.1 – 6.7
Wyandot – 8.8 – 6.4 – 10.6
About Sean DeWitt
