For the second straight month, Northeast Ohio registered a decline in the size of its payrolls, as calculated in the Ahola Crain’s Employment (ACE) Report.

In September, seasonally adjusted employment decreased by 1,657 jobs, to 1,172,402 last month from 1,174,059 in August, according to the ACE Report data. That followed a decrease of more than 3,600 jobs from July to August.

Both goods-producing and service-producing companies in Northeast Ohio shed jobs in September, the ACE Report found. Payrolls related to goods production fell by 1,539, and service-related regional payrolls fell 118.

September’s payroll number of 1,172,402 was below the region’s three-month (1,174,728) and six-month (1,174,286) averages, according to the ACE Report data.

However, Jack Kleinhenz, the Cleveland Heights economist who created the ACE Report model, noted that employment in Northeast Ohio “continues to remain in positive territory for the year, as there were 6,012 more jobs in the seven-county Cleveland/Akron region than the (like) month a year ago.”

Kleinhenz said in an analysis of the most recent data that there are “a lot of moving parts impacting Northeast Ohio economic activity, including seasonal forces in August and September, thus making it difficult to infer that slower growth is ahead.”

He noted that while employment measures “are important, they leave out other key information (that is) included in other economic series.”

For instance, Kleinhenz said he keeps a close eye on a “coincident economic index” produced for each state by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The index includes four factors: employment; average hours worked in manufacturing by production workers; the unemployment rate; and wage and salaries incorporating employment.

In August, he said, the coincident index for Ohio increased 0.3%, and it has risen by 3.4% over the past 12 months. These “are favorable figures when compared to the nation’s 0.24% and 3%, respectively,” Kleinhenz said.

He also found reason for optimism in the results of the Institute for Supply Management’s nonmanufacturing index. That index “rebounded strongly in September to 57.1 from 51.4 in August, well above market expectations and its highest reading since October 2015,” Kleinhenz said.

Meanwhile, he said, the ISM manufacturing index rose to 51.5 from 49.4, which “suggests a modest pickup in business activity in September.”

Kleinhenz concluded, “The improvement as measured by these indexes, though a bit uneven, holds out hope that a pickup in economic activity is underway for the remainder of 2017 and should provide the basis for future payroll gains for the Northeast Ohio region.”

Seaonally adjusted data

Recent Month’s Estimated Change

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