Strong June Follows a Good May to Move Ohio Private Employment Forward

The June 2012 Ohio by the Numbers report shows continuing positive signs for Ohio’s private economy. Ohio moved up a full four spots to become the 14th fastest growing state since January 2010. It was 18th in May’s report.

While a full recovery of Ohio’s private sector economy to its peak employment numbers of March, 2000 remains in the distance, that distance shrank by three months. Using the “boom” growth rates from the 1990s (nearly 95,000 per year on average), it will take until March of 2017 for Ohio to return to its previous private sector employment peak of 4.85 million last seen in March of 2000. However, that is an improvement over last month when the recovery date was projected to be June, 2017.

Overall highlights from the report:

Ohio gained 18,700 private sector jobs in June while losing 300 government jobs;

Ohio remains now ranks 14th nationally in terms of private sector job growth since January 2010, growing at a 4.3 percent rate (top ranked North Dakota grew 17.3 and Texas grew at 7.2 percent over the same time span);

Ohio currently ranks 46th for private sector job growth since January of 1990, growing at 6.9 percent (top ranked Nevada grew 84.2 percent over the same time span). Massachusetts fell below Ohio over this time frame during the month of June.

Within individual industry sectors, only Professional and Business Services and Education and Health Services continue to have more people employed in them today than in either 1990 or 2000. However, Leisure and Hospitality is less than 3,000 jobs away from joining those two sectors.

The report shows that Forced Union states (which includes Ohio and most of its neighbors with the recent exception of Indiana which became a worker freedom state in February) had a private sector growth rate far below Worker Freedom states. Since 1990, Worker Freedom states’ private sector jobs grew at a 36 percent rate vs. only 13 percent for Forced Union states.

Even during the decade from 2000-2010, which included the tech bubble burst of 2000 and the “Great Recession” of 2008-2009, Worker Freedom states gained jobs for a minimal growth of around 0.1 percent while Forced Union states lost 5 percent. Since 2010, Worker Freedom states also outperformed Forced Union states, growing at a 4.4 percent rate vs. only 3.7 percent.