Good news is being reported for workers in the state of Ohio as fewer of them are getting the ax from their employers. Or, at least they are in the numbers that qualify as a mass layoff action. As it turns out a smaller number of workers were looking to get onto the unemployment rolls due to mass layoff actions during the fourth quarter of last year, according to data that was recently released.

For those of you who are not familiar with a mass layoff action, here is the official definition:

“…mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days. ”

So you can see why fewer mass layoffs are a very good thing. Of course, these days most of the good news about the economy comes coupled with some bad news too.  Despite the lessening of the mass layoffs the state still had a large number of layoffs for the third quarter of last year. The state had the dubious honor of boasting more than 13,000 jobs that were lost in the last quarter of 2011, from mass layoffs. The layoffs, which numbered only 92 employers, is actually down from the 105 employers who were let go, about 15,066 workers in total, the same fiscal quarter the year before.
When we compare that to the national numbers, where 266,971 workers lost their jobs in what qualifies as a mass layoff action, for a total of 1,638 actions we can actually see that mass layoffs in Ohio actually account for about 17.804 percent of the overall layoffs in the state. This is not surprising when you consider that 538 of the  mass layoffs came from states in the Midwest.

In the state of Ohio, as in many other states in the union, the recession has hit hard and there have been a lot of job losses.  For those of you who did not catch our earlier coverage here is an excerpt from layoffs in Butler County Layoffs:

“Butler County, Ohio, is making some serious staff reductions in two of its most vital areas in the current economy: Job and Family Services. The county will begin a mass layoff at the agency in order to close a $3 million gap in the budget that was created by a decrease in the amount of funding given by the state and federal governments.

The layoffs, which will cut roughly one third of the staff from this office, are expected to include 16 caseworkers. The agency will close its Middletown office. The decision was made public, and final at a county commission meeting on Thursday. There the JFS Director, Jerome Kearns, laid out his decision and then informed the agencies non-union staff to get ready to cut another $400,000 free from the budget.”