Friday, December 16, 2011

Kasich's Ohio jobs recovery rolls on


Real leadership from Governor Kasich on Ohio's business climate continues to make a positive impact on the state. We've seen the difference from last year with all of the announcements of new jobs in the past weeks. And this morning, the results are starting to reveal themselves in the numbers. Ohio's unemployment rate took a big step in the right direction in November. Per the Plain Dealer:
Officials say Ohio's unemployment rate has taken its biggest one-month drop in nearly 30 years amid improvement in the state's job market and overall economy.


The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services said Friday that joblessness fell in November to 8.5 percent, from an even 9 percent in October.
The best news is that Ohio's drop in unemployment was larger than the drop in the national rate. That means Ohio is recovering faster than the rest of the country.

Of course, that should be no surprise to us here. We've been bringing all of the governor's efforts to your attention from day one. Recently, we've seen a flurry of announcements as those policies are really starting bear fruit. And the ride isn't slowing down.

Just yesterday, Total Quality Logistics announced they will add 575 brand new jobs at their location in Clermont County's Union Township. Ohio competed with another state for those jobs, but the Kasich administration won them for Ohio. And for those who bemoan that tax incentives are "corporate welfare", the state will recoup those funds in the equivelent of one short year.
TQL Executive Vice-President Kerry Byrne said Kentucky put together a good package, but in the end the firm agreed to amend its job creation tax credit package with Ohio.

"This program itself and the incentives that we provided to this company is a return on investment positive for the taxpayers of the state in year one."
That's not welfare, folks. That's a winning investment for Ohioans. In other good news, the company will build 100,000 square feet of new space for the expansion. That will, of course, provide plenty of construction work, as well.

Governor Kasich and his administration know there is still a long way to go. But what a difference an attitude makes. When you go out and court businesses, and let it be known throughout the country that Ohio is serious about doing business with them, results happen. When you recognize that something isn't working and implement changes to fix it starting from day 1, that's leadership.

It's a serious breath of fresh air and change in posture from the previous administration who thought Ohio's development department was doing just fine, even as Ohio bled 400,000 jobs.

"A new way, a new day" sounded to some like a corny campaign slogan last year. But this governor is making it a reality.



17 comments:

  1. Paul Ryan recently said this: "The federal government’s job is not to play favorites among firms — it is to make and enforce clear rules of the road, so that markets are fair, transparent, and competitive. In other words, government’s job is to foster an environment that is conducive to private-sector job creation....the government-as-investor model distorts markets, weakens the rule of law, and fails to spur sustainable job creation."

    I'm not sure why it wouldn't apply to state governments as well. Let's focus on the structural problems in Ohio.

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  2. For one thing, Ryan was referring to the horrible Solyndra debacle. If you are trying to compare the 2 situations, you are badly mistaken.

    TQL is an established company, who was already successful and profitable. They are not getting a handout, but a reduction in their taxes to create real jobs.

    Solyndra was never profitable, already recognized by the government as a very risky investment, but Obama gave them half a billion up front anyway.

    Our main "structural problem" is that Ohio has not been as attractive to job creators as other states, and we have suffered because of it.

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  3. What Ryan said applies to any business. Targeted tax cuts are bad policy not only because it distorts markets, but also because it runs counter to the idea that all tax payers should be treated the same. It appears that we have room for targeted tax breaks so I welcome the Governor's proposals for across the board tax cuts.

    As David Boaz put it: This wouldn't be happening if John Kasich were alive.

    http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/this-wouldnt-be-happening-if-john-kasich-were-alive/#utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cato-at-liberty+%28Cato+at+Liberty%29

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  4. Ohio only created 6k new jobs in November while 22k Ohioans dropped out of the labor market altogether.

    The main reason the unemployment rate dropped was that Ohioans were dropping out of the labor market at nearly four times the rate the economy was creating jobs.

    That's some "recovery."

    Sears was not a profitable company, and yet Kasich was willing to gamble $400 million on it, too.

    It's corporate welfare. Period. You can defend it, but you can't redefine it.

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  5. Modern Esquire,

    You are right. A much better plan was Ted Strickland's "just Let them all leave and bring no new jobs in" plan. The worked really well for Ohio.

    Tax Breaks attract businesses. They pay low taxes temporarily, but the workers they employ pay taxes. Maybe some even get off of unemployment (which is twice as good). It's hard to explain how business works to the Obama generation, who graduate from college without ever working a day in their life.

    I can't stand all this rooting against the State from you commenters just because you hate the Governor. So sad.

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  6. It's not rooting against the State to point out how naive Bytor is with his fanboy love of Kasich. First, most of the jobs Kasich has announced haven't been created yet, so they wouldn't be reflected in this report.

    Second, the reason the rate went down is that the rate in which Ohioans gave up looking for work nearly tripled in a month. That's nothing to celebrate.

    I'm sorry that as someone who actually works in the private sector and studied economics has to rain on the parade, but the reality is that this report only looks good in comparison to the past five months where Ohio's unemployment rate went up for three straight months before shedding jobs the final two.

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  7. You fail to answer my question... Is it better to do what Ted Strickland did, watch hundreds of thousands of jobs leave the State, or is it better to offer incentives to companies to bring jobs to Ohio. Thus creating a larger taxable population, at the same time removing the now employed people from State and federal aid programs?

    You should apply at moveon.org, they are dying for negative progressives like you.

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  8. Virtually all the jobs that were lost during Strickland's term were lost DURING the recession, which was second only to the Great Depression.

    Strickland offered incentives to plenty of companies to stay. In his first year in office, he prevented both Goodyear and Bridgestone from leaving. He got Continential to expand flights in Cleveland. So what you're asking is an entirely false question.

    Far more people in Ohio (tens of thousands) have simply stopped looking for work under Kasich than found jobs. In 2010, Ohio was creating jobs, dropping its unemployment rate, while people rejoined the labor market. Kasich has yet to have a month in which that occurred.

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  9. When you get paid by Kasich, as Bytor does, you spin in whatever direction he points.

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  10. Another brilliant anonymous post. Being happy about new jobs for Ohio MUST mean I'm being paid by someone. If only that were true...

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  11. "Virtually all the jobs that were lost during Strickland's term were lost DURING the recession, which was second only to the Great Depression." Yeah, caused by his friend, Mr. Obama.

    Great Leadership Mr. Kasich!!!

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  12. Ohio Joe-

    The recession began BEFORE the 2008 presidential elections. You know before Obama was elected.

    You hate Obama so much you're blaming him a for a recession that occurred before he was elected?

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  13. 6,000 new jobs is modest job growth at best. Strickland regularly had months just a year ago in which Ohio gained 15,000. And the unemployment rate dropped as the State regained populating in the labor market AND gained new jobs... a feat Kasich has yet to repeat even once since enactment of his "Jobs Budget."

    The reality is the new jobs only account for 30% of the drop in the unemployment rate. The rest of the drop is due to the largest single-month drop in the labor market (people stop trying to find work) since May 1975.

    Again, I don't see how anyone can objectively look at this jobs report as a whole and find much to celebrate in it.

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  14. Being happy about jobs is unrelated to the fact that Bytor is a paid astroturfer.

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  15. While it was true that this site used to be the exclusive purview of a paid out-of-state astroturfer on the Ohio Republican Party's payroll, there's absolutely no evidence that anyone would pay for Bytor to write the stuff he does. There's even less people willing to do that than those willing to read it.

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  16. "Strickland regularly had months just a year ago in which Ohio gained 15,000"

    HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!

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  17. Check the data, Rambo, you'll see that Ohio created 30k jobs in Strickland's last month in office alone. He had several other months in 2010 north of 10k. 6k is a modest growth month.

    Now who's laughing.

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