Here, "Joblessness" Is More Than Just a Word

2/21/2008

THURSDAY

5:30 PM

Wow. Don t want to harsh your mellow, as I once heard someone say, but just in time for the candidates sweep through northwest Ohio comes this downer blog post at the Campaign for America s Future, from economist Charles McMillion.

Headline: Out of Work in Ohio.

It is a depressing, discouraging, depressing, disheartening, depressing, and dismal recap of the employment situation throughout the Buckeye State the same place through which John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have and/or will soon be traipsing, promising this century s equivalent of a chicken in every pot. (That would be, what wide-screen TVs?)

Mr. McMillion s post quantifies what practically every, non-country-club-belonging Ohioan already knows intuitively, and certainly already feels acutely: Ouch. Things are tough around here.

every industry that is capable of exporting and faces foreign imports or routine outsourcing lost jobs in Ohio over the past seven years. All new jobs are in domestic consumer services that rely on soaring levels of debt.

Stir the martinis, honey. Mama s on her way home and needs a good cheering up...

The jobs data tell only one important part of Ohio s past seven-year economic story. Yet these record job losses bare [sic] strong witness to the depressing effects of record trade deficits and the loss of U.S. production that they represent. Another key part of Ohio s past seven-year economic history is the unprecedented levels of household and federal debt stimulus that even in Ohio played a vital role in moderating the effects of import competition, outsourcing and job loss. With the soaring engine of household debt now sputtering and debt service payments rising, strong industrial and trade policies seem urgently needed to halt Ohio s further decline.

Keep that tucked away this weekend as you listen to the candidates woo northwest Ohio voters