The Steel Valley is a five county metropolitan area around Youngstown that encompasses Mahoning, Trumbull, and Columbiana Counties in Ohio, plus Mercer and Lawrence Counties in Pennsylvania. The name is a once-relevant nickname used to describe the post-industrial region encompassing Northeast Ohio and Northwest Pennsylvania between Cleveland and Pittsburgh that is now known as the Greater Youngstown-Warren Metropolitan Area.
This Combined Statistical Area is located at the geographic center of the Rust Belt of the United States which stretches from Minneapolis in the west to Johnstown and Altoona in the east. According to the 2010 Census, the Greater Youngstown area is home to 763,207 residents
Historically, it was the largest steel producing region in the world (including all of Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania), and while today the area produces little steel, it is home to many scrap metal yards and aluminum plants (Linkon and Russo, 2003).
This area overlaps the Mahoning Valley, which refers to the geographic valley in which the Steel Valley sits. A once-powerful Ohio high school athletic conference in the Youngstown area was called the Steel Valley Conference.