Dayton beats Ohio’s big cities in job growth

Forget Ohio’s three C’s — the big D is besting them all in job growth.

Employment in the Dayton metro area grew by 2.8 percent, or 10,700 jobs, between December 2016 and 2017, according to preliminary state labor data.

Ohio’s largest metro areas could not keep up. During that time, employment grew 1.4 percent in Columbus, 0.4 percent in Cincinnati and 0.2 percent in Cleveland, the data show.

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The Dayton metro area — which consists of Montgomery, Greene and Miami counties — also had stronger employment growth than all of the Buckeye State’s other major metro areas, including Toledo (-0.4 percent), Akron (-1 percent) and Canton (-0.2 percent).

Dayton had “double the rate of growth of the national economy, and was the highest of all the metro areas in the state,” said Diane Shannon, Dayton’s deputy director of management and budget.

About 395,400 people were employed in the region in the final month of the year, which was the most since December 2006, state data show.

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Nonfarm payrolls in the Dayton region also grew 0.3 percent between November and December, which was better than most Ohio metro areas.

City of Dayton budget officials recently noted that the city’s baseline income tax revenue grew 2.8 percent last year to $111.8 million. That does not count new revenue from Issue 9, a tax hike approved by voters in 2016, which raised Dayton’s earnings tax to 2.5 percent from 2.25 percent.

Total collections last year were $122.4 million, the most in the city’s history, owing to about $10.6 million in additional Issue 9 money.

Dayton metro area employment by the numbers:

Nonfarm employment in December: 395,400

Increase in jobs from November: 1,300

Increase in jobs from December 2016: 10,700

Last time Dayton had more jobs: December 2006 (396,00 workers)

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