By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIIN
BG Independent News
The official unemployment rate in Wood County is back to pre-COVID numbers. But the numbers don’t take into account the people who have given up looking for jobs.
Wood County Economic Development Commission Executive Director Wade Gottschalk reported the latest statistics to the county commissioners last week.
Last year at this time, right before Ohio shut down businesses considered non-essential, Wood County’s unemployment rate was 4.3%, Gottschalk said. As of last week, the local unemployment rate had dropped back down town 4.1%.
“We caught up faster than national numbers,” he said of the 5.5% national average. “Our unemployment is back to pre-pandemic levels. We’re in pretty good shape.”
Helping to lower the jobless numbers were the 1,000-plus jobs at Amazon, plus increased job growth at FedEx, Home Depot and NSG in the county.
Of course, Gottschalk added, the drop in the overall labor force is not calculated into the jobless rate. Nationwide, the U.S. is estimated to be down 10 million jobs since COVID first hit – with an unknown number of people deciding to drop out of the labor force.
The continued need is being seen elsewhere in the county, with food pantry lines stretching through parking lots for up to triple the need normally seen in Wood County.
A year ago in March, 2,222 local residents applied for unemployment, starting the waves of people out of work after businesses were ordered to shut down. The following week, more than 4,029 Wood County residents filed for unemployment compensation.
In the first week of April last year, another 2,727 Wood County residents filed for unemployment. Then during the first week of May, another 511 Wood County residents displaced by COVID filed for help.
Those numbers were in stark contrast to the low numbers Wood County had been seeing prior to COVID. For example, just 68 people filed for jobless benefits in the first week of February 2020.
But a year later, Wood County is seeing some economic development interest, according to Gottschalk.
“We have been busy,” he said, telling the commissioners that his office is currently working with a couple companies under confidentiality agreements. “They are really good-sized projects.”
Local companies are also expressing interest in expanding after getting through the past year, he said.
“We’ve got several projects we are working on in Wood County right now,” Gottschalk said. “This could be a pretty good year – we just don’t know.”
However, the returning low unemployment rate means the county is seeing the same problem it faced prior to COVID – not enough prospective workers to fill available jobs.
“We’re starting to see the strain of that,” he said.
Some companies that have never had problems filling positions in the past are now having difficulties, Gottschalk said.
“Virtually everyone we talk to is looking for people,” he said.
“We’re definitely seeing a tightened labor market,” he said. And those businesses offering lower wages are having greater difficulties finding employees.“The lower you are on the wage scale, the worse off you are.”
The vast majority of Wood County’s manufacturers have starting wages above the proposed $15 minimum wage, he said.
But Gottschalk is hopeful.
“I’m fairly optimistic that once we get through more vaccinations,” then more people will return to the workforce, he said.
Also helping is the fact that Wood County employers can draw from a large area of prospective workers within a 45-minute commute time.
“We have a really big labor pool to draw on,” he said.
