Gov. John Kasich, while professing that it wasn’t a day to crow, took time Friday to note that new labor data showed the state has recovered the private sector jobs lost during the great recession.
Data released Friday by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services showed that the state gained 352,000 private sector jobs from January 2011, the month Kasich took office, to now.
Ohio’s unemployment rate remained at 5.1 percent, but more than 25,000 jobs were created in January.
Overall, employment remains behind as a result of government employment remaining down. But Kasich argues that isn’t the proper gauge.
“All we have counted the entire time we’ve been here is private sector jobs,” he said. “You only build an economy on private sector jobs.”
Kasich has often cited the figure of 350,000 jobs when talking about what Ohio lost during the recession. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that figure represents private sector jobs lost during Gov. Ted Strickland’s four years in office, which spanned the recession.
“Don’t get me wrong on this. This is not mission accomplished,” Kasich said. “I’m just telling you that for four years I’ve talked about 350,000 lost private sector jobs. … Mission accomplished from the standpoint of getting to the 350,000, but that’s not the end of our mission.”
The governor has been rapped for the speed of Ohio’s recovery, with critics contending that Ohio was trailing other states.
During the gubernatorial campaign, Democratic challenger Ed FitzGerald often noted that overall the nation had recovered the jobs lost during the recession that began in 2007. He used that data to charge that Kasich’s programs weren’t working to build Ohio’s economy.
Liberal-leaning Policy Matters Ohio noted in a statement Friday that the nation and most states regained their pre-recession job totals in 2014. Nationally, it said, about 2 million jobs have been added since the country broke even last April. Ohio’s job total grew about 1.2 percent over the last year while the national average was 2.3 percent, it said.
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