Ohio's job loss and lackluster recovery persists, tracking poor jobs and economic performance from 1996 through 2013

In June, George Zeller confirmed that in the last 17 years, OHIO HAD A SUB-PAR EMPLOYMENT PERFORMANCE relative to the Nation FOR A STAGGERING 14.3 CONSECUTIVE YEARS, March 1996 - June 2010!  REF: Economic Indicators project.

But this week our neighbor, Detroit's bankruptcy filing overshadows Ohio's jobs reports. I hate it when George put's out his updates!

George reports that once Ohio broke the negative streak in June 2010, we then saw an 11-month positive streak, a year of erratic performance and now - I hope you're sitting down - WE'RE BACK at the negatives WITH A NEW 11-MONTH SUB-PAR STREAK.

George Zeller goes on to say that with the lethargic current job growth rates, it would take Ohio another 17-years to recover the jobs lost over the last 17-years. And, in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, we're taking the brunt of the pain -

" In Cleveland the recession has been horribly catastrophic, with Cuyahoga County losing a staggering 16.5% of all its jobs, a job loss of 132,712 jobs...Current data show that the Ohio labor market never recovered from the 2000s recession, which has been over since 2002 in the USA, but which lingers in Ohio to this day, and which has been made much worse by the 2007-2010 United States national recession.

In addition to George Zeller's reports, others report on similar issues.  The following is from Kyle Fee, a Senior Research Analyst at the Cleveland Federal Reserve the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
"To see how Ohio’s business cycle compares to those of other states and the nation, we examine the state coincident indexes published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. These indexes combine nonfarm employment, average hours worked in manufacturing, the unemployment rate, and real wages and salaries into a composite measure of economic activity.

Several patterns stand out when comparing Ohio’s coincident index and the national index. First, Ohio’s index declined during the five national recessionary periods that have occurred since the late 1970s, including the current recession. Second, Ohio’s index falls more sharply and for a longer period of time during recessionary periods than the national index. This likely reflects the fact that Ohio has a larger share of cyclically sensitive industries, such as manufacturing, compared to the nation as a whole. Third, while the coincident index for Ohio generally tracks the national index between the early 1980s and the early part of this decade, the indexes diverge in the recovery cycle after the 2001 recession. Ohio’s economy has clearly underperformed the national economy, as Ohio generated particularly weak employment growth over this period."

REF: Economic Trends - Ohio’s Business Cycle, 1.7.2009