Ohio's 'Speed of Business' falls below national average for 66th straight month

When citizen John Kasich was running for governor of Ohio in 2010, he claimed former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland's development department ran at the speed of regulation, and that he would privatize the former public agency so it could run at "the speed of business."

Media lapped up the juicy bumper sticker slogan showing Kasich's craft in devising a tag line that sounded great but had yet to prove it's worth and validity

Gov. Kasich hired Silicon Valley

friend, follower and campaign 

confidant Mark D. Kvamme to run

jobs development at the "speed of business." 

For the past 66 straight months, Ohio's two-term lame duck CEO has fallen below the national average speed of business for over five and one-half years, even though his privatized and secret pet project group JobsOhio, a group of hand-picked CEOs he once said he would lead that has a billion in the funding pipeline after leasing the state's liquor profits for decades into the future, has yet to prove its worth.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services released employment and unemployment data for Ohio Friday, showing the speed of job growth in Ohio remains below the USA national average.

The May 2017 year over year Ohio job growth rate is 1.32 percent compared to the USA job growth rate during the same period of is 1.61 percent.

"This horrible sub-par job growth streak in Ohio has now been every month for five full years and six additional months," Ohio's preeminent jobs number guru George Zeller of Cleveland wrote in a monthly posting.

Zeller notes that 22,600 seasonally adjusted jobs were added in May 2018 seasonally adjusted. There were widespread employment increases in Ohio industries in May 2017, and a 700 downward revision to last month's April 2017 figure also caused an improvement to the May 2017 figure, Zeller said, noting that manufacturing increased by 500 jobs in May and government also increased by 2,500 in May (mostly in Local Government).

"Losses in manufacturing and government had been the key cause of slow job growth in numerous prior months, so a welcome improvement in these industries contributed strongly to the robust May 2017 Ohio job figure," Zeller said.

Annual revisions to the statistics show that Ohio gained only 32,200 jobs, the weakest annual year for job growth in Ohio since the end of the "Great Recession." A welcomed correction is that Ohio has already gained 64,300 jobs, a figure nearly double the number of jobs Ohio gained during the entire twelve months of last year.

Kasich Cites Secret Information

Kasich sees the numbers wearing a different set of reading glasses. A performance assessment of JobsOhio for this year only, as reported by The Business Journal, finds that it “consistently performed at or near the top five” of its peer organizations across core performance indicators.

"With today's jobs report, Ohio is now creating jobs 48 percent faster than the national rate since the start of the year, Kasich said. "The Ohio Model is working. Let's keep our foot on the gas."

What all other media reporting on Kasich's claim don't know or won't tell their readers, is that McKinsey has apparently been given access to a variety of "secret" databases that Jobs Ohio has long refused to release to the public.

Because it's a secret non-profit that's exempt from public records requests, Jobs Ohio refuses to make this information public. It's therefor difficult to evaluate whether or not McKinsey came to proper conclusions, since the data sources cited over and over in their report are not available to the public.

Small employment increases in May were seen on a widespread basis in other industries, including the normally rapidly growing Health Care and Social Assistance industry where 1,400 jobs in May were added. Normally low wage retail trade jobs increased by 4,000 jobs, the largest one month increase among Ohio industries, while nearly all other industries experienced at least some increase.

The 4.3 percent May unemployment rate in Ohio is higher than the 3.8 percent USA unemployment rate in May, Zeller notes as "the 18th consecutive month when Ohio's unemployment rate has exceeded the national average, even though both Ohio's unemployment rate and the USA unemployment rate have been steadily declining in recent months."

"The new data once again point out the vital importance of speeding up Ohio's rate of recovery," Zeller stressed, adding, "It will be more difficult to do that next month in the June data, since large mass layoffs at the General Motors Lordstown assembly plant have already been announced for implementation this week, but which are not yet measured in the new May 2018 data for either Lordstown or its suppliers."

Running His Mouth At The Speed Of Deception

It's bad enough that Ohio has fallen below the national job creation average for nearly six years, but when the report jointly released Thursday by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio hit headlines, outgoing Gov. Kasich's verbal razzle dazzle from 2010 that wowed media showed that running at the speed of business was so much hype when it comes to jobs paying a living wage.

The report, Out of Reach, found that only two of the top 10 occupations in Ohio actually pay their employees enough to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment, the report released last Wednesday revealed. The wage to afford housing in Ohio increased again this year to $15.25 – the hourly amount renters need to earn to afford the rent for a basic, two-bedroom unit.

Of the 10 occupations in Ohio with the most employees, only registered nurses and customer service representatives earn more than the two-bedroom housing wage. The median wage for nurses is $30.59/hour and $15.34/hour for customer services reps.

“Ohio’s economy is recovering and our state has added new jobs in recent years. But the lack of affordable housing is a real barrier to continued growth when so many people holding these new jobs can’t afford a place to live. Just like home is essential for family stability, housing is the foundation of our economy,” said COHHIO Executive Director Bill Faith.

Faith added, “The affordable housing gap is bad enough for working families, but it’s even worse for people with disabilities, homeless veterans, and those struggling to recover from mental illness and addiction issues. That’s why we need state and federal leaders to step up and expand access to affordable homes.

Kasich has been distilling a future after governor for himself by writing editorials on world events and other topics for major print publications media outlets and appearing on national TV talk shows as a critic of President Donald Trump, who won Ohio handily and mocks Kasich when time and opportunity permit.

Were Washington and New York based political pundits to review why Kasich's glibness hasn't turned into better paying jobs for more Ohioans still wondering when the national recovery will recover them to better paying jobs, they would find Kasich is running his mouth at the speed of speculation while his record of governance has so many faults and failures in it.

Sources tell SOA that the Lordstown layoffs are anticipated as soon today, meaning they may not show up in the actual official figures until July even if the layoffs are this month in June, since the survey date for July may be just prior to the actual date of the Lordstown mass layoffs.

As much as Kasich has let Ohio down over the past 66 months, there's more worry ahead that's coming out of Washington than Columbus. Zeller notes that the trade war President Trump has embarked on won't "help matters in future months, either."