The national unemployment rate for July was 6.2%, a bit higher than the Ohio unemployment rate of 5.7%. Compared to the 7.5% unemployment rate in 2013, things seem to be going in the right direction for Ohio. And although the recession seems to have slowed lending for small businesses, small business owners are still optimistic that things are heading in the right direction.
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Ohio jobless rate posts small hop to 5.7% in July
Ohio’s unemployment rate edged up to 5.7 percent in July, as the number of those out of work rose and the total with jobs dropped from the prior month.
The state reported Friday that non-farm employment sank 12,400 jobs from June to nearly 5.3 million last month, helping push up the jobless rate from 5.5 percent in June. About 323,000 Ohioans were out of work in July, the Department of Job and Family Services reported.
The state’s jobless rate in July 2013 was 7.5 percent.
But the state said 24,400 more individuals were working in July than a year earlier. Adding the most jobs over the 12 months was the goods producing sector, up 14,700, and professional and business services segment, up 17,000 positions.
Who’ll pick SC peaches? Immigration policy gridlock stymies farm labor
The heated tempers of the nation’s border states are driving the debate over immigration policy. States such as South Carolina, though, are reckoning with a different set of challenges: a skimpy agriculture labor market and cumbersome immigrant worker programs that go unfixed amid partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill.
Over 20,000 U.S. farms employ more than 435,000 immigrant workers legally every year, according to 2012 U.S. Department of Agriculture census data. Thousands – probably tens of thousands – more are employed illegally. In the fruit orchards of the Carolinas, farmers confront a blue-collar labor vacuum.
“Because we’re not a border state, it’s definitely harder to get people over this far from the border to work,” said Chalmers Carr, the owner of the East Coast’s largest peach grower, South Carolina’s Titan Farms. “2006, 2007, even 2008, we had a very robust economy and there were not enough farmworkers then. And there’s truly not enough farmworkers now, legal or illegal.”
Small-Business Lending Is Slow to Recover
Lending Remains Far Below Pre-Recession Levels; Things ‘Aren’t What They Used to Be’
Small-business lending by banks is rebounding but remains far below prerecession levels, forcing entrepreneurs in places like Carroll County, Ga., to seek other financing sources. WSJ’s Angus Loten joins MoneyBeat with the details. Photo: Carrollton Mainstreet.
CARROLLTON, Ga.—Brandi Shirey wants to borrow at least $20,000 to expand the birthday- and wedding-cake business she started four years ago after leaving her job as a bookkeeper.
Demand for the cakes, which sell for $150 to $500, overwhelms her home kitchen. She plans to use about $2,000 from her savings to move into a nearby storefront next month. But the 28-year-old Ms. Shirey believes her credit record and financial paperwork have to be bulletproof before she dares approach a bank for a loan. “It’s time to grow,” she says, but things “aren’t what they used to be.”
