Employment in Northeast Ohio took a slight dip in January, with a loss of 650 jobs from December to January. That represents a loss of 0.06% of the region’s jobs, according to the Ahola Crain’s Employment (ACE) Report, with the number employed dropping to 1.16 million.

That January number, however, is a gain of 1,244 jobs, or 0.11%, from the number of people employed in the region in January 2015.

There is usually a falloff of employment in the early months of the year, said Jack Kleinhenz, the Cleveland Heights economist who compiles the ACE data.

Still, Kleinhenz sees regional employment on an upward trajectory.

“The employment data is consistent with an economy that downshifted during the month” of January, he reported. “The rate of improvement in labor market conditions remains erratic for both the nation and the region, but the labor market continues to move in the right direction.”

But where Northeast Ohio saw an actual drop in employment, Ohio and the nation saw only a decline in the pace of job growth. Nationally, the growth in payrolls was 151,000 for the month, according to U.S. Department of Labor estimates. That was below expectations since 262,000 jobs were created in December.

Similarly, job growth in Ohio was off slightly. The state saw growth of 7,888 jobs between November and December, according to data compiled by ADP, a national payroll firm, but only a gain of 6,837 between December and January, an increase of 0.15%.

Longer term, a report released in late January by the Brookings Institution showed that job growth in Northeast Ohio — it divides the region into Akron and Cleveland-Elyria metropolitan areas — has languished for a decade. Brookings is a Washington, D.C., think tank.

The organization publishes a periodic “Metro Monitor” that tracks growth, prosperity and inclusion in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. The report calls the recovery from the 2007-2009 recession as “slow and uneven,” with growth strongest along the West Coast, the Intermountain West and Texas and weak in the Sun Belt.

“The manufacturing economies of the eastern Great Lakes, like those in Northeast Ohio or Upstate New York, also saw weak recoveries,” the report stated.

Using data from Moody’s Analytics, Brookings puts employment growth in the two Northeast Ohio metros among the lowest third of the 100 metropolitan areas in the country. The report shows that employment in the Akron metro has been flat for the decade ending in 2014.

For the last five years, since the recession, Akron saw employment growth of 3.5%. For the last year, employment grew by and 1.5%, according to Brookings’ analysis.

In the Cleveland-Elyria metro, employment still is below a decade ago, by 3.3%, though it has picked up since the recession, with 3.6% growth for the last five years.

Brookings reports no employment growth in the Cleveland metro for 2014, the last year in the survey.<br

Seasonally Adjusted Data

Month	Non-Farm	Small      (1-49)	Mid-Sized (50+)	Goods-producing	Service Producing
June(Actual)	1,163,941	473,458	690,483	216,623	947,318
July(est.)	1,157,861	470,937	686,924	216,173	941,688
Aug(est.)	1,158,709	471,291	687,418	216,196	942,513
Sept(est.)	1,159,375	471,571	687,805	216,203	943,172
Oct(est)	1,162,009	472,658	689,351	216,462	945,547
Nov(est.)	1,161,126	472,402	688,724	214,819	946,307
Dec(est.)	1,163,443	473,357	690,086	215,071	948,372
Jan(est.)	1,162,791	473,090	689,701	214,971	947,820
Recent Month’s Estimated Change
Dec ’15 to Jan ’16	(652)	(267)	(385)	(99)	(553)
Diff fromJan 2015	1,244	733	512	(3,014)	4,259
Trend
3-month	1,162,453	472,950	689,504	214,954	947,500
945,622	945,622	945,622	945,622	945,622	945,622

By Jay Miller

February 26, 2016