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Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), who ran on a job creation agenda, and who used job creation as an excuse to assault the rights of workers, ended his first year in office having shrunk the size of the workforce in the state. The governor and the media are touting his job creation numbers, but Ohio blog Plunderbund does a masterful job taking those claims apart:
You see, Ohio’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30 of the following year. So until June 30, 2011, Ohio was still under Governor Ted Strickland’s last budget even though Kasich was Governor.
In pushing the legislature to pass it, Kasich said his “Jobs Budget” was the reform-oriented group of policy proposals that would lead to job creation in Ohio. No other piece of legislation has Kasich claimed would do more good for the economy than his “Jobs Budget.” It’s where JobsOhio got its funding source, it’s where the State repealed the estate tax (although not effective until June 30, 2013… because otherwise the legislature would have had to find a way to pay for it.) It’s is the alpha and omega, so far, of all of Kasich’s economic policies.
Most of the 46,600 jobs that Kasich touts as having been created in Ohio since he took office were created before his “Jobs Budget” was in force. In fact, more than 82% of the jobs that were created since Kasich took office were created before July of this year (when Ohio was still under Governor Strickland’s budget.) In fact, over half of the new jobs created during Kasich’s entire term so far were created within the first 90 days of the Administration.
What did Kasich due during that time that warrants him receiving credit for those jobs? Nothing.
The Plunderbund post goes on to also report on the most important bit of context that needs to be taken into account when any job creation numbers are mentioned -- are people getting jobs or are they dropping out of the workforce? Can you guess what's happening in Ohio?
And as for the labor population (the measure of how many individuals are working or looking for work), the labor market shrank in the six months before the Jobs Budget became law by 15,000. Given that it shrank by 22,000 in November alone, do you really want to know the number of how much its shrunk in the five months since the Jobs Budget became law?
Over 48,000 Ohioans have dropped out of the labor market since the “Jobs Budget” became law.
To put it another way, more Ohioans have dropped out of labor market in Ohio in the five months since the “Jobs Budget” became law than all the jobs Ohio has created since January of this year.
In short, it’s hard to look at the totality of the objective economic data in Ohio and say that John Kasich deserves any credit. Quite the opposite, it’s easier to suggest a negative correlation, and that John Kasich’s agenda has actually hurt job creation, rather than helped it.
