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MANSFIELD - A year after being hit by a tidal wave of economic uncertainty, the workforce of North Central Ohio has started to stabilize.
In fact, some local experts say it could even start looking better than it did before the COVID pandemic.
The standard unemployment rate for the region was hovering around 5.7% in March of 2020, according to Clint J. Knight, the director of workforce development for the Richland Area Chamber of Commerce and the Richland Community Development Group.
Then the novel coronavirus shut down dining rooms and kept many workers at home on furlough. The impact was sudden and sharp, as you see in a drastic climb in unemployment between mid-March 2020 and the end of the month, Knight said. We rocketed from 5.7% to about 20% in just a few weeks.