Can Someone—Anyone—Defend the DeWine-Husted Jobs Record?

Until voters on the Right stop voting for career politicians who claim to be conservatives, Ohio will remain a dead state walking.

As you know, every month I grab the latest jobs data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Based on the July preliminary figures, Ohio’s private sector for all of 2024 has grown by just 17,600 jobs. For the entire 5.5 year run of the DeWine-Husted Administration, Ohio’s private sector is only up 82,100 jobs, with a mere 50,000 since January 1, 2020. As a point of comparison, Florida has added over 50,000 private jobs in the last six months. Ohio's tepid job growth is why Ohio is ranked 37th out of the fifty states for its pandemic recovery. This pathetic record is despite the claims they made about the impact the Intel project was going to have on Ohio. That project is now delayed two years. With the plummeting demand for electric vehicles (EV) as I predicted would occur, don’t be surprised when the LG-Honda EV battery plant in Jeffersonville, Ohio, fails to open on time, if at all.

I've long argued that Ohio simply is not competitive with states that have no state income tax, enacted right-to-work, and possess world-class airports to facilitate business and personal travel. My pro-union opponents and weak-kneed allies may not want to face reality, but, based on the BLS data (i.e., not made up data), right-to-work states crush forced union states on private sector job growth. Since 1990, the average net percentage job growth in right-to-work states stands at 73.5%, which is more than double the growth in forced union states (32.5%). Even worse is that Ohio’s growth (18.2%) is nearly HALF that of other forced union states and MORE THAN four times BELOW the right-to-work states average. Since 2010 (the Kasich and DeWine-Husted eras), Ohio’s growth has been slower than other forced union states and way slower than right-to-work states. You can see that visually below by how Ohio’s RED line is flatter than both the forced union ORANGE and right-to-work BLUE lines.

I know my union friends will come back at me with the shibboleth that right-to-work is the “right to work for less,” but the population booms happening in the right-to-work states, as people move from forced union states like Ohio to right-to-work states like Florida, isn’t being driven by people wanting to work for less. They are leaving for both warmer and colder right-to-work states because the competition for jobs is better, which drives pay and benefits up as companies compete for workers. More jobs = more opportunity = more competition = more money in your pocket. And, no, the injury rate between right-to-work states and forced union states is roughly the same, so people aren’t getting hurt at higher rates because unions don’t represent them. Unions bring little more than more bureaucracy and fewer jobs.

This terrible jobs record isn’t just an indictment of DeWine-Husted (and Kasich). It also decimates any claim by JobsOhio that it is working. In the thirteen years since it has been operating, Ohio’s private sector job growth has gotten consistently WEAKER not stronger. If JobsOhio was working, the arrow below should be going up, not down. Keep in mind, Ohio’s elected officials and JobsOhio have faced the exact same good and bad headwinds coming out of Washington, D.C., so they cannot make an excuse other than acknowledge its bad state policies. JobsOhio has done very little to improve Ohio’s private sector, yet its employees have been paid tens of millions of dollars for failing. Nice gig if you can get it.

And if their bottom-feeding jobs record wasn’t enough, the DeWine-Husted spending record is as atrocious. Specifically, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, total state spending stood at $27.4 billion. As the chart below shows, John Kasich pushed spending substantially higher driven by his expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare. Things didn’t improve when DeWine-Husted took over. With the end of FY2024 on June 30, total state spending broke all spending records by hitting $43.8 billion. That means in just thirteen years, state spending in Ohio grew by a staggering 60%, or 4.6% per year. All of the enormous spending increase happened with Republicans in full control—in many years with supermajorities—of the Ohio General Assembly and the Governor’s Office. With such high spending levels, there is no way to eliminate the state income tax so Ohio could become a no tax Mecca like the other eight states without a state income tax. 

Bear in mind, for all but the last three years under Joe Biden, the inflation rate was less than half of Ohio’s annual 4.6% average spending rate increase. From 2010 to 2024, Ohio’s population only increased by 2.3% IN TOTAL, so the annual population increase averaged a scant 0.18% per year. Thus, adding inflation and population together only explains about half the 4.6% annual spending increases under Ohio’s trifecta Republican government. What justified doubling inflation plus population growth? Can anyone tell me how that spending record can be filed under the “less government conservatives” heading? Can anyone tell me how this spending record doesn’t look just like it would look if the Left had full control over Ohio? And don’t hit me with the “it could be worse” cliche. Until voters on the Right stop voting for career politicians who claim to be conservatives, Ohio will remain a dead state walking.

P.S. I was glad to see that within 24-hours of my previous column on why the continued employment of U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was typical for the Left, she resigned in disgrace. You can credit Congressmen Jim Jordan and Ro Khanna, but the pen, as they say, is mightier than a clickbait congressional hearing:-)