The Columbus Dispatch
Is ‘right-sizing’ government hurting Ohio’s economy?
By Tom Dodge 

Ohio has lost government jobs at a steeper rate than most of the United States since January 2009, and the cratering public sector is having a negative impact on the state’s overall economic recovery. 

During the past 4 1/2 years, a period that includes the end of a national recession, Ohio has shed 47,900 federal, state and local government jobs for a 6 percent drop, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Only California, New York and Florida have lost more government jobs, and Ohio’s drop percentage is more than triple the national median rate. 

Most of Ohio’s public-sector pain has been felt at the local level — think police forces, firehouses, road crews and schools — where 45,100 jobs have been lost, an 8 percent decline. 

Ohio has added 10,100 net jobs in that time, counting all nonfarming employment. 

“This phenomenon has certainly taken steam out of the recovery,” said Karl Kuykendall, an economist with IHS Global Insight, who said employment in Ohio would be 16 percent higher had the public sector remained at its mid-2010 level. 

“Normally I would go along with my professional brethren and say it’s time the public sector took it in the shorts,” said Edward “Ned” Hill, a conservative Cleveland State University economist, talking about the traditional conservative theory that smaller government is better government. 

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