That’s one of the economic high points cited by Columbus Economist Bill Lafayette in his 2013 Columbus Regionomics Forecast.

Lafayette says while several sectors of the economy are holding their own, an increase in the number of people considered below the poverty line could take its toll on the overall Central Ohio economy.

Columbus and Franklin County have consistently outperformed most of the state since the end of the recession. That trend continued in August, when the city’s unemployment fell to 6 percent. That’s a half-percent drop from July and more than a full percent below the statewide average.

Regional economist Bill LaFayette says it wasn’t a case of frustrated job seekers giving up on their search.

“You have about 6,000 people more who are working now than were working in January. And so the decline that we’ve seen in the unemployment rate is for real,” LaFayette says.

LaFayette says the August report means Columbus has now regained 84 percent of the jobs the city lost in the recession. That’s more than double the percentage of jobs regained statewide, and more than double the national average.

Most other portions of Ohio saw seasonally-adjusted unemployment drop in August. All of the state’s major metro areas saw people go back to work, and only two counties – Jefferson and Belmont in eastern Ohio – saw unemployment rates go up.

For decades, COTA has operated a spoke and hub route system. Buses travel to and from downtown where passengers often have to transfer to get to another part of town. Economist Bill Lafayette, founder of Regionomics LLC, says for a long time that kind of mass transit system made sense. But, in the last two decades.

“Well we’ve seen a dispersion of jobs”

Lafayette says just in the last ten or twelve years, even with the development of the Arena District, the number of private sector jobs in the downtown area has plummeted by more than 30 percent.

“The number of private sector jobs downtown was 91,000 in 1999 and had fallen to 59,000 by 2009.” Says Lafayette.

While downtown shed private sector jobs, the city’s perimeter is now dotted with office and light industrial parks from Grove City to New Albany to Rickenbacker.

“That poses a challenge for transit.”

COTA Vice President, Marty Stutz, says it costs more than $100 per hour to operate a bus, large or small. And, when job sites are more dispersed it often makes little economic sense to dedicate a crosstown route to take riders from say New Albany to Metro Center in Dublin.

“Public transit works best in high density areas. So, when you are taking fewer people to jobs that are dispersed outside of the outerbelt, its more expensive.” Stutz says.

Stutz adds that commuters who live in one suburb and work in another are often unwilling to drive to a park and ride and then spend up to an hour on a bus. Morse-Henderson is one of the few crosstown routes operated by COTA. It runs from the Meijer store at Hamilton and Morse, makes stops at Easton Town Center, and then travels city streets to the Crown Point Plaza on Bethel Road. During morning drive time the bus takes an hour and fifteen minutes to make the trip.

“We have a great roadway and freeway infrastructure where you can be in many parts of the city in a shorter period of time than you can in many major metropolitan areas. So, we are challenged to compete with the automobile.”

Stutz says next year COTA will compete for 600-thousand dollars in federal transit funds targeted specifically to provide services to job sites not currently served by COTA…its part of a program called job access-reverse commute. Andy Taylor at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission says the funds potentially could help COTA provide transit to workers without automobiles.

“For areas where they can’t get to easily with transit, where there are some potential growth opportunities. Especially for maybe low-skilled work, work that doesn’t require a lot of experience but that potentially could be a good wage. ”
Taylor says the planning commission next year will handle bids for the federal funds and COTA will have to compete with other smaller agencies and transportation companies to win the Job Access funds so any new services would be less dependent on high density neighborhoods and concentrations of tens of thousands of jobs.

Columbus Chamber of Commerce economist, Bill Lafayette, describes the job losses as a ‘hiccup.’ In June alone, Central Ohio lost 4900 jobs.

“A good chunk of that June decline was in government and that decline wasn’t necessarily echoed at the state and national level,” Lafayette said.

In fact, Akron, Dayton, Cleveland and Cincinnati all added jobs during the second quarter, while the number of Columbus jobs declined.

Lafayette said manufacturing employment helped job growth in those other Ohio cities. The job losses in Columbus occurred while state government was working to balance a new two-year budget and eliminate an 8-billion dollar budget deficit.

Construction, retail, professional and business services all posted job gains in Central Ohio during April, May and June. But, Lafayette said, as a state capital, the region is susceptible to future government cutbacks.

“In terms of total government employment we’re above the national average,”  Lafayette said.

Lafayette said 16 percent of all jobs in Central Ohio are government jobs.