Ohio job losses worst in seven decades

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http://www.workers.org/2008/us/ohio_0313/


In the days leading up to the Democratic presidential primary, the media spotlight has been on Ohio. The most critical issues facing Ohio workers, however, aren’t necessarily front page news. Stuck on the business pages was the fact that from 2000 to 2007 the net job loss in Ohio was the worst since 1939—the tail end of the Great Depression.

Calculating the number of new jobs created and the number of existing jobs eliminated, a study last month by the American Trade Manufacturing Action Coalition concluded that Ohio had 209,000 fewer jobs now than seven years ago, a decrease of 3.7 percent. Only Michigan suffered more, with a decrease of more than 9 percent.

Not only have jobs left Ohio, but the types of jobs being cut are reducing the income of those still working. Gone are 236,000 manufacturing positions in steel, auto and other industries—a catastrophic drop of 23.3 percent. Metropolitan areas have lost anywhere from 17.5 percent (Akron) to 46.9 percent (Springfield) of their industrial employment. The inner cities are hurting the most; in Cleveland, for example, some African-American neighborhoods have adult unemployment at well over 50 percent. The massive foreclosure crisis is inseparable from the crisis of jobs.

While the loss of a job is indeed a terrible misfortune for a worker, to say these 236,000 good union jobs simply got “lost” lets the bosses and the economic system off the hook. These facts and figures are symptomatic of a deep, deep crisis of capitalist overproduction, coupled with a two-pronged corporate strategy of slashing employment and driving down wages. The most recent job cuts follow more than two decades of re-industrialization (really deindustrialization) going back to the late 1970s. As Sam Marcy wrote in 1980 in “Re-industrialization, the Menace Behind the Promise”: