More than 575,000 Ohioans filed initial claims for unemployment in March, according to a monthly job report released Tuesday by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

The Akron metropolitan area, which covers Summit and Portage counties, saw gains in goods-producing jobs wiped out by losses in service sector industries — with the steepest declines in the hospitality sector.

With 12 metropolitan service areas’ payrolls tracked monthly by the state, the greater Akron job market was the only in Ohio to see average weekly earnings fall while average weekly hours worked went up.

Ohio’s labor market in March took a bigger hit than the national average. Unemployment climbed 64% faster in the Buckeye State. The national unemployment rate climbed from 3.5% to 4.4% (up 0.9 percentage point) versus the Ohio unemployment rate, which jumped 1.4 percentage points.

"Part of that may be timing," Steve Millard, president and CEO of the Greater Akron Chamber, said of steeper job losses in Ohio. "We were one of the first states to shut down."

The impacts of quick and consequential public health policies to throttle back the economy and personal travel may take a couple months of hindsight to fully understand, said Jacob Duritsky, an economic researcher with Team NEO, a regional economic development group that’s been tracking Northeast Ohio job markets since the Great Recession.

Duritsky cautioned that the monthly data released Tuesday is a survey of households. Better job data from a census of employers will follow.

He expects to encounter "a little bit of noise" in any early economic report "as the speed of which things happen catch up with the data."

Ohio’s unemployment rate has topped the national average by a half to a percentage point for the past few years, Duritsky said, for several reasons, including legacy jobs in hard-hit factory work; a local talent gap in manufacturing, health care and information technology and a population 5% older than the national average.

While the health and composition of a post-COVID-19 economy remains a study in progress, Duritsky said it’s already painfully apparent that jobless claims last month were 10 times higher than the worst month of the Great Recession.

Unemployment rates for March settled at 5.6% for Summit County, 5.7% in Portage, 6% in Stark, 6.3% in Medina, 4.1% in Wayne and 5.4% in Ashland.

A 0.6 percentage point uptick in the unemployment rate of Greater Akron was dwarfed by a 2.2 percentage point jobless slip in the Cleveland area.

Despite hundreds of "nonessential" employees furloughed from Akron city government, the March Labor Market Review report shows no change, yet, in government sector jobs from February to March for the Akron area job market. Many furloughed employees collecting paid time off may not appear in jobless figures until that vacation and other time is exhausted.

Summit and Portage counties added 400 mining, logging and construction jobs and 200 manufacturing jobs in March. Manufacturing for the region, however, was still down 500 jobs over the past 12 months.

These modest monthly job gains in goods-producing industries were erased by more than 2,000 jobs lost in the service sector: including 1,600 in leisure and hospitality; 300 in professional and business services; 100 in trade, transportation and utilities; and 100 in educational and health services.

Statewide, average hours worked per week fell for all but construction, retail (including grocery stores) and financial activities (including banking and lending). Average hourly pay continued to fall for most goods-producing jobs while workers in retail and wholesale saw wages tick up in March, landing them about $2 more an hour than at this time last year.

Reach Beacon Journal reporter Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.