Jobless rate up in Ohio as national figure falls

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http://www.cleveland.com/business/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/business/113783658656220.xml&coll=2

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Ohio's unemployment rate inched up from 5.7 percent to 5.9 percent in December, hurt by a loss of more than 10,000 service jobs, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

The number of unemployed workers rose from 340,000 to 347,000 for the month.

That despite the fact that the national unemployment rate improved from 5.0 percent to 4.9 percent in December.

"This is going very much in the opposite direction that the country is going," said Richard DeKaser, chief economist at National City Corp. of Cleveland...