Article published April 24, 2008
Toledo jobless rate now pales in contrast to past's
By TED FACKLER
BLADE BUSINESS WRITER
The Toledo unemployment rate, at 7.9 percent in March, strikes many residents as high. The Ohio rate, at 5.7 percent, does as well.
But figures from previous economic downturns show the 2008 rates aren't so bad after all.
In the past 65 years, the worst joblessness rate recorded in Toledo was 15.7 percent in March, 1983. That year's annualized rate, at 13.8 percent, is the area's worst.
Ohio's worst rate in that span was 13.8 percent in December, 1982. Its highest annual rate was in the same year, at 12.7 percent.
Chances are that Ohioans won't experience rates that high again, even if what economists have called the current recession rumbles on, said one expert.
"The unemployment rate could go up, but it won't go up as high as it has in the past," said George Mokrzan, chief economist at Huntington Bank, Columbus.He cited the auto industry's recent restructuring as helping to save future job.
"The companies are in a better shape to deal with recessions," he said.
Jim Coons, owner at Coons Advisors LLC in Columbus, said Toledo unemployment rates probably will go up a few percentage points. Jobless rates typically climb for many months after a recession ends, he said.
"If we're in a recession, we're in the real beginning of it right now," he said. That means the number of people unemployed is likely to get bigger, he added.
In March, 2001, the beginning of the United States' last recession, Ohio's unemployment rate was 3.9 percent and Toledo's was 5.8 percent.
Two years after the economic trouble ended, the rates were 6 percent in Ohio and 7.6 percent in Toledo.
From 1990 to 1993, Ohio's rate of unemployed averaged 6.6 percent and Toledo's was 10.5 percent.
Ohio's worst recession in terms of unemployment was 1980 to 1985, as manufacturing operations began moving overseas.
At that time, the state rate was 10.2 percent on average and Toledo's was 13.8 percent. Rates prior to 1983 in Toledo were unavailable from state officials.
"That downturn crushed a lot of the heavy industry in this area," said Mr. Coons.
Steel mills and some automotive operations moved overseas, and nationally the greatest job losses were in mining, construction, and manufacturing.
The jobs lost "weren't temporary layoffs, they were permanent layoffs of jobs and companies that didn't come back," he explained.
During that period, Toledo's unemployment rate was exceeded in Ohio by Youngstown-Warren at 19.7 percent and Canton at 15.9 percent. For the state, even during the election month of November, 1982, the rate was 9 percent.
Ohio's worst unemployment rate in history occurred during the Great Depression, 1929 to 1939.
Conclusive statistics do not exist, but rates often hit 25 percent to as much as 80 percent. The Ohio Historical Society, in 1933, declared 40 percent of factory workers and 67 percent of construction workers unemployed in the state.
"It's fair to say that Toledo was the hardest-hit industrial city of the time," said Timothy Messer-Kruze, author of Banksters, Bosses, and Smart Money, an outline of the Toledo bank crisis that precipitated the depression.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on a visit in 1935, was recorded as declaring Toledo "the hardest hit by the bank troubles of any city in the country." The national rate was assumed to be 25 percent during that period.
Mr. Morkzan, of Huntington Bank, said, referring to recent conditions, "It's been a tough time in Michigan and Ohio."
"But," he added, "I don't see it as being as severe as those past years."
Contact Ted Fackler at:
tfackler@theblade.com
or 419-724-6199.
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