Henry Officials Get Training Session On Unemployment Numbers

Some state offi­cials stopped in Napoleon Mon­day to talk with Henry County offi­cials about how local unem­ploy­ment fig­ures are cal­cu­lated. The Cres­cent News reports that Henry County Job and Fam­ily Ser­vices direc­tor Shan­non Jones invited them to come to town to come talk about the method­ol­ogy behind the unem­ploy­ment rate, in an effort to help county lead­ers under­stand why they expe­ri­ence large fluc­tu­a­tions in their unem­ploy­ment rate. Ear­lier this year, Henry County’s unem­ploy­ment jumped from 4.9 per­cent in Decem­ber to 7.5 and 7.2 per­cent in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. Coretta Pettway, bureau chief with ODJFS, said all unem­ploy­ment fig­ures begin with the national unem­ploy­ment esti­mate. Released the first Fri­day of every month, the national unem­ploy­ment esti­mate is based on the Cur­rent Pop­u­la­tion Sur­vey, a joint effort between the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics. Pettway told Henry County offi­cials, that Ohio’s unem­ploy­ment esti­mates are then based on the Ohio data col­lected from that sur­vey, as well as infor­ma­tion from the Cur­rent Employ­ment Sta­tis­tics pro­gram, which gath­ers infor­ma­tion from busi­nesses and unem­ploy­ment insur­ance claims. She said that once statewide unem­ploy­ment fig­ures are deter­mined, the sub-state fig­ures can then too be deter­mined. Pettway also said that unem­ploy­ment fig­ures that are released each month are pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures and that they may be revised the fol­low­ing month. She said when look­ing at unem­ploy­ment data offi­cials should make sure that they are using the most recent figures.