Team NEO's quarterly shows the Northeast Ohio is matching the slow upward trend nationwide, and even growing a little faster than the national average.
The largest surprise was in the numbers indicating total employment - up 80,000 jobs in the 16-county area - since January. That's a 4% jump, compared to a national increase of just above 1%.
WALTERMIRE: This is actually the first time that our total people working is higher than a year ago, and that's the first time that that's been true in the last five years.
The increase in jobs reflects growth in each of four reporting sectors: construction, service, government, and perhaps most important, manufacturing, which has increased about 5% this year. Waltermire credits businesses' willingness to innovate and adapt in the 21st century economy.
WALTERMIRE: Manufacturing in NEO is now smaller scale, more diverse, higher tech, more innovative, more globally oriented, and so we are producing less of what we consider to be commodity products.
And what we are producing, Waltermire says, isn't nearly so labor-intensive as the steel and auto making of the past, which is one reason why the growth has gone been relatively unnoticed.
But the regional unemployment is showing signs of stabilizing. At 9.9%, the rate is as close as it has been to the national rate - currently 9.5% - in several quarters.
Waltermire does caution that that regional economic growth is far from robust. But it's encouraging that, unlike in past recessions when Northeast Ohio fell farther and longer than the economy as a whole, this time it's on track to catch the wave forward - when that wave eventually gathers momentum.
