There is no sign of slowing demand for workers in Ohio — for now.

Statewide, there were 305,415 openings as of Oct. 13, the most recent data available, according to OhioMeansJobs.com, the state’s jobs website. That’s the most in data going back four years and an increase of 28,767 job postings from the reporting period in the prior month.

Regional postings have been climbing this year, too, hitting fresh highs for several metro areas in 2022 on that most recent report. There were 69,433 jobs openings for the Columbus area, 52,840 for the Cincinnati area and 100,712 for the Cleveland area.

Even as job listings continue to climb, employers indicate they struggle to find applicants for the positions they need to fill, and that includes the startup companies.

“It’s still hard to find people in every space. Startups are not an exception,” said Max Brickman, founder and managing director of Heartland Ventures, a venture-capital firm based at Easton. “It’s not time to panic.”

“There’s a mismatch in the labor market (between) what skills and background that employers are looking for and the skills and background of the worker that are available,” Nationwide senior economist Ben Ayers said.

Pain will be 'short-lived'

While demand for labor remains strong for now, he expects that to ease in 2023 as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates to fight decades-high inflation, he said.

“We would expect all of the key labor market data to slow heading into 2023,” he said. “The current pace of job gains and employer demand is unsustainable, especially given the sharp Fed tightening cycle and signs of slowing demand across the economy.”

Nationwide is forecasting a recession next year but doesn’t expect it to be as deep as the brief but powerful recession during the early days of the pandemic and the brutal Great Recession of 2007 to 2009.

“There will be some pain, but it will be short-lived,” resembling what would be considered a more typical kind of recession the American economy has experienced in the past, Ayers said.

The unemployment rate likely will increase by 2 to 3 percentage points — the U.S. rate was 3.7% in November, and the Ohio rate was 4.2% in October, (Ohio’s unemployment report for November is due Dec. 16) — with the rate peaking late next year or early 2024, he said.

“The consensus is that we’re going to slow down. The common fear is that the Fed is going to overreact,” said Mark Partridge, the C. William Swank chair in rural-urban policy at Ohio State University. “They’re going to be pushing so hard, they’re going to overreach.”

Beyond the Federal Reserve raising rates, so much uncertainty right now could affect the economy, whether it’s a change in the war in Ukraine or fuel prices that spiked earlier in the year, he said.

But any slowdown or recession doesn’t figure to change the long-term track of the economy in the state’s metro areas, he said.

mawilliams@dispatch.com

@BizMarkWilliams

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Will there be a recession in Ohio in 2023