The Latest Jobs Data Shows Just how Dismal Ohio Is Doing Compared to Other States

At some point, I hope DeWine, Husted, the Republican supermajority in the Ohio General Assembly, and JobsOhio are held accountable for their systemic failures. The evidence against them is irrefutable

With the release of the latest jobs numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), I thought it was an opportune time to review the job numbers for Ohio under the six-year tenure of Governor Mike DeWine and Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted (now a U.S. Senator) who have been backed by an Ohio General Assembly with Republican supermajorities in both chambers, as well as the grossly ineffective JobsOhio.* The table below shows the changes from January 2019 when DeWine-Husted took the reins of state government to December 2024 across eleven industry sectors the BLS tracks plus total non-farm job growth. I color-coded each industry sector by using green to show percent gain of 2% or more, yellow to represent job growth of less than 2%, red to show job losses, and grey to show taxpayer funded sectors like government, education, and health services (yes, I realize, some health services are covered by insurance payments, but this broad brushstroke works for this analysis). Lastly, I added a line simply to show how many jobs and what percentage of Ohio’s non-farm economy are taxpayer funded.

As you can see, the six-year tenure of DeWine-Husted isn’t good. Three sectors (Mining, Manufacturing, and Information) LOST jobs totaling 26,400 lost jobs, including the all-important manufacturing sector. Four other sectors (Financial Activities, Professional & Business Services, Leisure & Hospitality, and Other Services) barely grew only adding 21,800 jobs. Two sectors (Construction and Trade, Transportation & Utilities) grew by more than 2%, accounting for 58,700 jobs. The two taxpayer funded sectors netted 53,300 jobs, which represented 31% of all jobs. Of the eleven sectors, only one saw double-digit positive growth. The total non-farm job total over the six years of the DeWine-Husted Administration came in at a paltry 107,400, or just 17,900 per year on average in a state with nearly 11.9 million people. Loyalists and apologists for DeWine, Husted, Republican legislators, and JobsOhio can try to spin these numbers, but the world doesn’t have enough lip stick to make this pig pretty.

To put Ohio’s jobs numbers in proper perspective, I thought it would be helpful to compare Ohio’s results to the results in six other states: Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. Keep in mind when reviewing the tables below, every state faced the exact same headwinds caused by the global pandemic and the Biden-Harris Administration. Because loyalists and apologists will complain that Ohio is a cold weather state, so can’t compete with warm weather states, I included three cold weather states for the comparison (Colorado, Idaho, and Utah). The table below shows that those states consistently have as cold or colder weather than Ohio, so cold weather isn’t the cause of Ohio’s jobs woes. Often overlooked by the cold weather complainers is the fact that states like Florida and Texas have brutally hot and humid summer months that can be just as taxing on job growth as cold weather. All of the states are Red states politically except Colorado, which is also the only other state with Ohio that isn’t a right-to-work state. Three of the states (Florida, Tennessee, and Texas) don’t have state income taxes. In case you are wondering if I cherry-picked states, all but fifteen states have outperformed Ohio during this span.

While Colorado lost 9,900 jobs in its very small Mining and Information sectors and barely added manufacturing jobs, it still netted 249,700 jobs across all sectors (more than twice as many as Ohio, which has nearly twice as many residents as Colorado). Like Ohio, Colorado grew taxpayer funded sectors. Imagine how much better Colorado could have done if it had been led over the last twenty years by pro-growth, pro-energy leaders instead of hardcore progressives. I sometimes am stunned that it has been over twenty years since I worked for the last Republican governor of Colorado before it turned from red to blue. If Colorado didn’t have the majestic Rocky Mountains to draw Californians, it would hemorrhage people and jobs. Colorado is like Ohio when it comes to having a state income tax and not adopting right-to-work.

Florida is just crushing it, as it added 1,118,900 jobs over the last six years, or more than ten times as many jobs as Ohio added with only twice the population. Not only did it add jobs in every sector, it also shrank the percentage of jobs in Florida that are in the taxpayer funded sectors. Five sectors saw double digit growth. Florida possess the triumvirate of being a red state that has no state income tax and has adopted right-to-work.

Idaho did even better than Florida by growing its non-farm economy by over 18% since January 2019. It added jobs in every sector, with all but two sectors not seeing double-digit growth. Idaho added more jobs than Ohio despite being nearly six times smaller. Idaho also reduced the number of jobs as a percentage of jobs that come from the two taxpayer funded sectors. Idaho is a red right-to-work state.

Tennessee is another triumvirate state like Florida, as it is red politically with no state income tax and right-to-work on the books. Every sector grew in Tennessee allowing it to double up Ohio’s job growth during the same span despite having 4.5 million fewer residents.

The last triumvirate state, Texas, saw every sector grow except its mining sector. In just six years, Texas added over 1.6 million jobs with strong growth in most sectors. Six sectors had double digit growth with taxpayer funded education and health services also hitting double digit growth. Texas has a little over 2.5 times more people than Ohio, but added 15 times more jobs than Ohio.

Finally, like Idaho, Utah turned out a very strong six years. It had double digit growth in every sector except one. It also nearly doubled Ohio’s total job growth despite being 3.5 times smaller than Ohio. It also is a red right-to-work state.

I could have included tables for all fifty states, but it wouldn’t make Ohio look better; rather, the states doing worse than Ohio are the states you’d expect are doing worse—deep blue states that favor labor unions, have high taxes, and heavily regulate their businesses and citizens. The only red states that do worse than Ohio over this six-year span are West Virginia, Iowa, and North Dakota, with all three facing significant geographic and demographic challenges (i.e., far removed from large population centers, distance from major north-south/east-west highway arteries, and long-term devastation from the opioid epidemic).

Even if the best case direct, secondary, and tertiary job estimates pan out for the troubled Intel project and the recently announced Anduril project (more on that next week), Ohio still will be deep in the hole compared to other states. Those other states have their own big deal projects. Ohio needs to change the trajectory it is on. To do that, policymakers must adopt a Reaganesque bold colors agenda. Two key items in that agenda are eliminating the state income tax and enacting right-to-work. You cannot do the former without first regaining control of the state budget by repealing John Kasich’s Medicaid expansion under Obamacare that is swallowing more than half of the state budget. Enacting right-to-work might be harder because of the dependency the Republican Party under Donald Trump now has on rank-and-file union members (Trump Democrats). The Trump-Trump Democrats dynamic has essentially frozen the right-to-work versus forced unionization fight in its current state, which means states like Ohio that desperately need to enact it are left permanently stuck behind the existing right-to-work states. That is a Faustian bargain that is good for Trump, may be good for America, but is horrible for Ohio, its businesses, and workers.

Should someone other than me come along willing to fight the right-to-work fight, I’ve previously laid out the best way to enact right-to-work that removes the threat of the veto referendum from the equation using an emergency measure declaration. Given the jobs data above, the grounds for using this emergency measure route is stronger than ever. The long-term case to justify emergency action is significant. First, in March 2000, Ohio’s private sector hit an employment high in which 42.6% of Ohio’s population was working. It has now been almost twenty-five years since hitting that high. To hit that figure again based on Ohio’s population growth since March 2000, Ohio’s private sector would need to employ 5.027 million workers, which is 127,000 more than our current total. I estimate it will take several more years to get back to the level of employment Ohio last had a quarter century ago.

Secondly, since 1990, Ohio’s private sector is ranked 44th in America. Lastly, since 1990, forced unionization states like Ohio have only averaged 33% net percentage job growth as right-to-work states have averaged an eye-popping 74% growth, or more than twice as much growth as forced unionization states. Even worse, Ohio staggers in at a mere 18.6% growth, or four times less than the right-to-work average. Ohio’s private sector is in dire straits, so emergency measures are needed. Assuming Ohio Republicans could muster the political courage to do what is right, the key question presented by this proposal is: would Ohio Trump Democrats turn their backs on the Ohio Republican Party, or would they grudgingly stay the course knowing that what is best for Ohio and America is far more important than their union, which can’t do much for them in a state that has such anemic job growth (read: their unions can’t bargain for much given the lack of job growth in Ohio that stifles pay and benefit growth versus the power those unions would have if Ohio’s job growth looked like the six states above in which competition for workers would drive pay and benefits higher)?

Assume for a minute the cold weather complainers are actually right. Wouldn’t that mean that Ohio has to do even MORE than competitor states have to do to keep and to attract businesses? I believe at a minimum Ohio has to eliminate the state income tax, repeal Medicaid expansion, and enact right-to-work. If you think I’m wrong, what bold color policies do you think will catapult Ohio from the back to the front? What bold color policies are DeWine pushing? Answer: none. Husted? None. Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman? None. Senate President Rob McColley? None. David Yost? None. Robert Sprague? None. Keith Faber? None. Former Budget Chair Jay Edwards? None. Frank LaRose? None. When is enough of this status quo nibbling on the margins enough for you?

At some point, I hope DeWine, Husted, the Republican supermajority in the Ohio General Assembly, and JobsOhio are held accountable for their systemic failures. The evidence against them is irrefutable. After fourteen years in business and billions doled out, Ohio’s job growth under JobsOhio should be leading America; instead, it has gotten weaker the longer they’ve done their work. There is a reason no other state to my knowledge has adopted the JobsOhio model for economic development. With such a terrible record, why would they? Success breeds imitators; failure does not. With such a terrible record, why hasn’t it been scrapped?

P.S. ICYMI, my latest interview on The Bruce Hooley Show where we talked the airplane-helicopter crash and getting accountability for bad education results. Believe it or not, I’ve been on many airplanes that have landed at Reagan National Airport AND I took a Black Hawk helicopter from DCA to an undisclosed location during my time working for President George W. Bush. It is always a crowded and precarious area to have both types of aircraft coming and going.

P.P.S. Happy to see folks at The Federalist join my call from eight years ago for America to go to war against the Mexican Drug Cartels and Mexico to stop the flow of fentanyl and other drugs, as well as stop human trafficking and possible terrorist and weapons of mass destruction from coming across the border..

*With others now finally joining me in criticizing both the Intel project and JobsOhio, I wanted to point out that for a long time on both issues I served as THE lone voice fighting back against the powers that be while others remained silent. I raised issues with the Intel project the same week it was announced, as I was deeply concerned given Intel was and is a company in crisis that has bled market share and cash for years. My first missile at JobsOhio came in October 2015 when I published, “JobsOhio Needs a More Accurate Tagline.,” including this video. I criticized the lack of transparency and accountability from the start vis-a-vis JobsOhio.