Trump Bringing Rank-and-File Union Members to the Right Makes It Virtually Impossible for Ohio to Escape Its Systemically Weak Job Growth

The price for Trump's New Coalition: Ohio being relegated to a dead state walking in which population and job growth stagnant in perpetuity.

I don’t care whether you are a free market person like me or a die-hard union man, the longitudinal data on private sector job growth is unequivocal and irrefutable. Going back to 1990, the data produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that right-to-work states have netted on average 71.8% job growth while forced unionization states like Ohio have only managed to average less than half that level of growth (32.5%). Ohio has fared even worse at just 18.2% net percentage job growth in thirty-four years, which is a mere 0.54% increase per year and four times less than the right-to-work states' average.

Now, you can read from Big Labor’s hymnal to claim that all of those jobs being added in right-to-work states are low-wage jobs, but it defies common sense that millions of Americans have fled the forced unionization North to work for less in the right-to-work American South. The last time I ran the wage data, it showed that right-to-work states had closed the large pay gap that existed in 1970 to just 11% by 2010. Given how far ahead the industrial and free North was of the Confederate states as of 1970 when the Jim Crow Era ended, that is a remarkable achievement. With the bulk of new, high-paying manufacturing facilities being built in right-to-work states, I expect whatever wage gaps remains will be eliminated by 2030.

Unfortunately for Ohio, it is now caught between the Scylla and Charybdis, with the former being its forced unionization status and the latter being the dependence Republicans now have on union members to win elections in the Trump Era. Even if the political will existed in the Ohio Republican Party (it doesn’t), Ohio seemingly can’t enact a right-to-work law without alienating the rank and file union members it needs to win elections. Now, political hacks may not care, but anyone who loves Ohio and wants it to thrive should care.

As Ohio’s private sector job growth languished, its population also barely grew, as many Ohioans opted to seek greener pastures where job opportunities are more plentiful. As you can imagine, population and job growth go hand-in-hand. With that stagnant population growth, Ohio’s political clout has declined as other states grew, thereby adding congressional seats taken from Ohio. I’ve previously compared Ohio to Florida to show how badly Ohio is doing. In 1970, Ohio had several million more citizens than Florida, nearly twice the number of private sector jobs, and roughly double the Electoral Votes. By the 1980s, all of those lines began to cross as Florida grew and Ohio stagnated. By 2020, Florida had grown to more than twice the size as Ohio, with millions more private sector jobs, and nearing twice the Electoral Votes. It has only gotten worse over the last four years given Ohio’s harsh DeWine-Husted pandemic shutdown. In four years, Ohio has eked out just 66,200 net private sector jobs, which is twelve times LESS THAN Florida did. Since February 2020, Ohio’s private sector net percentage job growth is ranked a dismal 36th. 

My estimates on what America will look like in 2050 show continued huge losses in the forced unionization North, with gains mostly in the right-to-work American South. By 2050, Ohio will be down to just fourteen Electoral Votes, as Florida hits thirty-seven Electoral Votes (with booming Texas just one Electoral Vote shy of tying shrinking California). Maybe none of this matters to you, but it will matter to your kids and grandkids. The lure of the more prosperous South will get harder and harder for them to resist. Ohio already has lost a net 700,000 residents ages 10 to 54 from 2000 to 2020, which only accelerated Ohio’s already above-the-national-average aging population. As more of Ohio’s best and brightest high school and college graduates and working age citizens opt to head South, Ohio’s tax base will shrink even more than it has, leaving an increasingly costly aging population in the hollowing out counties beyond the Cincinnati and Columbus areas. 

I’m not suggesting it is a bad thing that Donald Trump brought union members into the Republican Party; rather, union members (like minorities) have long agreed with virtually every issue promoted by the Republican Party except unionization. I’m simply pointing out that it would have been better for Ohio’s long-term health had Republican Governor John Kasich and the supermajority Republican legislature passed a private sector right-to-work law like Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia did BEFORE Trump won in 2016 so that Ohio didn’t get caught between enacting one of three policies that would give it a fighting chance to compete for jobs and the union members it now needs to win elections. 

When I explored a run for governor in 2023, I often spoke to union members. I did my best to explain to them that right-to-work would help them, too. My argument was straightforward. You can have forced unionization with little-to-no net job growth for decades thereby resulting in little competition for workers, which suppresses wage and benefit growth (i.e., competition for workers drives wages and benefits up as employers compete for workers). In contrast, you can have right-to-work which will spur Ohio’s economy and job growth, thereby resulting in more competition for workers and increased wage and benefit growth. Right-to-work won’t eliminate unions; it will merely make it harder for Big Labor to unionize NEW facilities, but it also will create more opportunities for union members and strengthen the bargaining hand of the unions to push for higher wages and benefits from existing employers lest those workers leave for higher paying jobs in other Ohio companies. In that more competitive environment, workers win whether they are unionized or not. The only possible loser is Big Labor should its union members leave to work in non-unionized facilities making more money, which would decrease the union dues Big Labor collects from those departing members. Union dues, by the way, that it uses to elect Democrats who push for many policies union members vehemently oppose like open borders, transradicalism, affirmative action, higher taxes, green New Deal environmental zealotry, centralization of power in Washington, more power to supranational international organizations, wokism in our schools, capitulation to the mullahs in Iran, and other far left progressive policies.

Ohio may land a big manufacturing facility every now and again (see Intel possibly), but those occasional wins won’t be nearly enough for Ohio to escape its systemic weak job growth ranking. Moreover, Ohio’s higher tax status won’t help to attract the workers every state will be competing for to populate the facilities being built. Trump, like Ronald Reagan, has grown the Republican Party by appealing to large swaths of new voters who historically voted for Democrats. I welcome those men and women to the fold, but I don’t do so by blindly ignoring the enormous cost Ohioans will bear for their support. It is a cost that states that were right-to-work by 2016 or heavily Blue states that will never put worker freedom ahead of the Big Labor bosses who fund Democrat campaigns don’t have to pay. Ohio and Missouri (which enacted a right-to-work law that got overturned by a Big Labor funded special election) are the only reliably Red states wallowing in the bottom fifteen for job growth that pay the heavy price Trump’s new voters demand to remain on the Right. 

That price: being relegated to a dead state walking in which population and job growth stagnant in perpetuity.

P.S. It is simply a fact that milk comes from the mammary glands of mammals. Nothing derived from squeezing nuts or oats or any other product should be called “milk.” Call those products almond juice, oat juice, or whatever you want, but don’t call those products milk. The same goes for meat products, which can only come from animals.