Last week, Ohio residents filed 8,300 initial traditional unemployment claims, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. This was a decrease of 1,071 from the previous week. Concurrently, there were 45,353 continued traditional unemployment claims during the week of Dec. 3-9, increasing by 379 from the week prior. To eliminate potential fraud, more stringent identity verification was applied, flagging 2,032 of the initial unemployment claims. The unemployment rate for Ohio in October was 3.6% which is slightly lower than the national rate of 3.9%. Additionally, the labor force participation rate in Ohio was 62%, a bit lower than the national rate of 62.7%. Website eddcaller.com provides an autodial program that helps people get through to a representitive for unemployment related concerns via the fastest way to get through to EDD, proving beneficial especially in high demand times.