Unemployment rates in Clark and Champaign drop to lowest point during pandemic

“The unemployment rate would have been higher if all the people who lost their job in the pandemic would have stayed in the labor force,” said Bill LaFayette, an economist and owner of Regionomics, a Columbus-based economics and workforce consulting firm.

LaFayette said the unemployment rates for November do not take into account those who lost their jobs and are no longer actively looking for work.

Those estimates in the unemployment rate as well as the number of residents either employed or looking for work were released by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. The latest estimates were released earlier this month.

The number of residents estimated to be employed in both counties increased between October and November. But the overall labor force, the sum of employed residents and those actively looking for work, decreased or stayed the same.

The stagnant-to-decreasing labor force compared to an increase in employment was the primary factor in the drop in unemployment rates between those two months for both counties.

The unemployment rate in Clark County went from 5% in October to 3.5% in November. In Champaign County, that rate went from 4.2% to 2.9%.

The overall labor force in Clark County went from 62,800 to 62,100 between those months while employment went up from 59,700 to 60,000.

In Champaign County, the labor force stayed the same at 19,200 during that period while the number of residents estimated to be employed went up from 18,400 to 18,700.

The labor force for both counties have fluctuated since the same period in 2020. But they are still lower than what was reported in both October and November of 2019.

In Clark County the labor force between October and November of 2020 went from 61,900 to 62,300. While in 2019 that number went from 64,000 to 63,700 during the same period.

The labor force went from 19,900 to 19,700 in Champaign County during the same period in 2020 and in 2019 that number went from 20,400 in October to 20,100 in November.

But for this year, the number of employed residents did increase between October and November when that number usually remains stagnant, said LaFayette.