A new flood of job cuts is on the way in Ohio, according to layoff notices posted with the state yesterday.
Seven companies doing business in Ohio plan to eliminate more than 2,300 jobs at plants in more than a dozen locations across the state between now and the middle of summer.
Sluggish auto sales are the culprit for many of the employers.
The largest cuts were announced by Severstal Wheeling Inc., a steel company that is idling more than 900 workers at four eastern Ohio locations. Next is Colfor Manufacturing, which is laying off about 600 workers at three plants in northeastern Ohio.
"It can kind of be a chain reaction," said Keith Ewald, chief of the Ohio Bureau of Labor Market Information. He said it's not surprising that several companies made similar decisions at the same time, because they all serve the auto industry.
Ohio's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 9.7 percent in March, the highest since 1984, according to Ewald's office. The number of unemployed Ohioans is now 577,500, up nearly 200,000 from a year ago. The flurry of filings matches the job losses posted with the state over the previous month.
None of the cuts affects central Ohio directly, but they represent another blow to a state that has struggled to keep jobs.
Concerns about the steel industry are nothing new for Jefferson County, along the West Virginia border, where the bulk of Severstal's losses are occurring, said Ed Looman, executive director of Progress Alliance, the local economic-development group.
"We've been experiencing this roller coaster for a while with them," he said.
Severstal's predecessor, Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel, once had 15,000 workers in the county. With about 2,000 workers currently, the company remains the county's largest employer. Now, nearly all of those workers have lost their jobs or are about to.
While the layoffs are painful, they aren't nearly as bad as in the early 1990s, when the job losses were much greater, Looman said.
"This county has been trying for years to change our main economic focus," he said. "For years, we were coal-related and steel-related."
One of the local bright spots is Wildfire Motors in Steubenville, which makes electric vehicles. The company has 75 employees and is planning to add 100, he said.
That is the kind of incremental gain that will slowly cancel out the losses, though economist James Newton expects layoffs to continue at a rapid pace.
"Job markets are going to be horrible for quite some time," said Newton, chief economic adviser for Commerce National Bank in Columbus.
He points to recent examples of so-called "jobless recoveries" in which the economy improved but the job market was slow to follow suit.
Ewald agrees that the job market will likely be one of the last parts of the economy to recover.
"Even if you see positive signs in other areas, you may still see unemployment rise," he said.
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