“Since July’s peak, we’ve lost some ground,” said Abbie Patel-Jones, Dayton’s director of budget and management, during a finance committee briefing earlier this month.
Nothing doing
About 388,500 people were employed in the Dayton metro area in December, which was the exact same number of workers as December 2023, says preliminary, seasonally adjusted BLS data that is subject to revision.
The metro area includes Montgomery, Miami and Greene counties.
Before netting zero new jobs last year, the Dayton metro area saw payrolls increase by more than 4,400 jobs in 2023; 5,600 jobs in 2022; and 6,900 jobs in 2021.
However, those three years of employment growth followed massive job losses in 2020, due to the COVID pandemic.
Patel-Jones, with the city, said the region lost nearly 61,000 jobs between February 2020 and April 2020, which came during lockdowns and stay-at-home orders.
It took years but the region this past July finally recovered all of the jobs that were wiped out during the pandemic and then some. Local employment rose to the highest level in 17 years.
“As of July 2024, we saw a new peak, which was 392,900 jobs,” Patel-Jones said.
But immediately after that, starting in August, the region saw job reductions for five straight months.
Comparison
Year-over-year, the Dayton region in December saw job declines in manufacturing (-0.2%); trade, transportation and utilities (-0.6%); government (-1.2%), professional and business services (-1.6%); and information (-1.8%), says survey data that was not seasonally adjusted.
Industries that saw employment growth included construction, mining and logging (+4.1%); education and health services (+1.7%); and leisure and hospitality (+1.3%).
Molly Bryden, climate and sustainability researcher for the liberal leaning Policy Matters Ohio, said public sector jobs could be in flux because of the current federal landscape and the drying up of COVID relief funding.
Nearly 16% of local workers are employed by local, state and federal governments. This sector could see more contraction since the Trump Administration has pledged to reduce the size of the federal government and has offered to buy out federal employees who want to leave their jobs.
Bryden also noted that rising supply-chain costs may continue to erode the manufacturing industry. Slightly more than one in 10 jobs in the Dayton region are in the manufacturing sector.
In addition to Dayton last year, the Lima metro area also saw no job growth, while the Columbus and Youngstown regions shed workers.
The Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo, Springfield and Mansfield metro areas all saw employment increase, though some of the gains were quite small.
The state of Ohio added 6,800 jobs in December, bringing its full-year tally to 61,000 new jobs (+1%).
Looking ahead, above-average interest rates will continue to be a drag on the economy in 2025, especially for the construction industry, said Rea Hederman Jr., vice president of policy for the conservative leaning Buckeye Institute.
Hederman said businesses also may be reluctant to expand due to uncertainty about inflation, trade and other federal policies and the expiring Trump tax cuts.
But Hederman said major companies continue to invest in Ohio, which is creating new job and business opportunities.
Local leaders say thousands of new jobs are coming to the Miami Valley region in the near future because of projects like onMain and Joby Aviation.
Joby plans to build electric air taxis in Dayton, which could create 2,000 new jobs. The onMain redevelopment of the former Montgomery County Fairgrounds could also result in 2,000 new jobs.
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