Economist: Unemployment up in Dayton but ‘folks are out there actively looking for jobs’

Each year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ reviews its employment data, and this year’s re-evaluation found that US job growth was weaker than earlier numbers had indicated.

The new numbers released in mid-August showed the US economy actually had 800,000 fewer jobs in March than initially reported.

But what about our local economy? To find out, Jerry Kenney spoke with Bill LaFayette, the owner of Regionomics, an economics strategy firm in Columbus.

Bill LaFayette: People are still, to a certain extent, traumatized by the pandemic and the sharp recession that we had back in 2020. Some local economies, including Dayton’s, haven’t come back to the same degree that the national economy has come back. The national economy’s job total is about 4% more than what we had in February 2020, just before the pandemic. The Dayton economy, though, has just now broken even.

Jerry Kenney: We’ve talked about smaller company layoffs in Troy, Springfield or wherever. How do those play into all of this? What sectors are doing well and where are the problems right now?

LaFayette: There are some sectors of the Dayton economy that are doing quite well. Manufacturing is one. Manufacturing is obviously a major key sector in the Dayton economy and year over year, as of July manufacturing in Dayton is up 1.5%. The US is up 0.1% and Ohio is down 0.3%. And so you’re really, really setting the world on fire there. You’re also doing really well in leisure, which includes arts, entertainment, museums, hotels and restaurants. There, you are up 3.6% year over year — 1,500 jobs, net gain. The US is up 1.8%. So you’re doing twice as well as the US as a whole and you’re doing seven times the 0.5% that those industries are seeing statewide.

On the other hand, federal government (jobs) is obviously a really crucial sector for Dayton that is underperforming.

The real worry, though, for Dayton goes back to the slow population growth. The problem there is that you’ve got broad swaths of the economy that primarily serve a local market. And so if the market itself isn’t growing, then the only way these sectors, like retail and restaurants and a lot of health care can expand, can grow, is at the expense of their competitors. One firm steals business from another firm, and individual layoffs certainly tell part of the story. But if you if you’ve got an economy of almost 400,000 jobs, a 50 job layoff is certainly traumatic and negative for the people who get laid off, but in the grand scheme it doesn’t make that big a difference. So it’s not the big job increases and the big job losses really driving the economy. What really drives the economy is 10 jobs here, 15 jobs there, in hundreds of companies.

Kenney: I’m not asking you to fortune tell, but what should people be looking at as we continue through the current economic situation?

LaFayette: Well, I can fortune tell to a degree. There’s really good news in your unemployment statistics. Your unemployment rate is a little bit higher than the state and national averages. But the real reason why the unemployment rate has increased is that there are more and more people coming in to the Dayton area labor force. And so what that means is that these folks are out there actively looking for jobs and they’re connecting with employers. They will connect with employers, and employers will be able to fill the positions that are vacant. And that’s certainly positive for your economy.

Kenney: Bill Lafayette is the owner of Regionomics, LLC. Bill, thank you so much for your time and the information today.

LaFayette: Thank you very much, Jerry.