The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland says the region’s economy is improving, even as the population shrinks and gets older, according to the bank’s latest report on local metro economies.
Employment in the Cleveland area has inched up from mid-2017 to the middle of last year, growing 0.6 percent. Construction and manufacturing jobs saw the biggest percentage increase over that time.
But the total number of jobs in the Cleveland metro area is still below pre-Recession levels. There are fewer people here than there were a decade ago—and they’re older, too. Still, the Fed called it “encouraging” that the region is seeing job growth in the face of these changes.
Businesses appear to be more productive, with the region’s gross domestic product per person, growing faster than the state and national averages.