Welcome to Ohio: Where Our Economy Is Officially Circling the Shitter!

Welcome to the Buckeye State: Where Our Economy Is Officially Circling the Shitter!

Gauging poverty is a lot like judging beauty. Oftentimes, it lies in the eye of the beholder. Different polls use different measurements and not everyone is willing to admit their real income when quizzed by some stranger donning a clipboard. This makes it difficult to pin down exactly how many people are living in poverty. However, economic polls like this one are useful for showing trends—especially when they use the same measurements year after year. And if we are to believe the latest trends, Ohio’s economy is headed straight for the drain—especially for those of us in our 30’s and 40’s.

Oh, and just in case you think Ohio is unique or a trend setter, don’t. Mark Twain didn’t allegedly say he wanted to be in Cincinnati when the world ended for nothing. He said it because Cincinnati “is always 20 years behind the times.” So it’s safe to assume something happening in Ohio is probably happening elsewhere too—particularly in the Midwest.


Here’s the bad news coming out of Ohio.

The number of adults ages 30 to 45 living below the poverty level - defined as less than $20,000 a year for a family of four - almost doubled from 2005. In 2007, 16 percent of adults in that age group lived below the poverty level, while it was 9 percent in 2005.

In that age group, the percentage of adults with incomes of $40,000 or higher for a family of four shrunk to 61 percent in 2007 from 73 percent in 2005.

Judging from my own college transcript, I know statistics don’t always register with everyone. So please, take a minute to think about what the numbers are telling us. At the exact age (30-45) when people should be increasing their earning power, many Ohioans in their prime are actually making less money than they were two years ago. That doesn’t happen in places with thriving economies.

These are the people that are supposed to be establishing their careers. They’ve graduated from college, they’ve gained some experience in their respective fields, and they are still physically fit enough to be working labor intensive jobs if that’s the path they’ve taken. So why are 30 and 40-something’s in Ohio headed in reverse?

It doesn’t take a graduate degree from The Ohio State University to figure what’s going on. You’ve all heard the reasons. Simply put, there are no good jobs for non-college grads. Many of the jobs that have sustained middle-class Ohioans (unionized factory work is a prime example) are long gone. They’re being replaced with service industry jobs that don’t pay nearly what the old jobs did (insert favorite Wal-Mart joke here). Unfortunately, an even scarier trend is looming just over the horizon.

What trend? The one involving Hollywood starlets, large amounts of booze and drugs, fast cars, and no underwear? While disturbing enough—no—I’m talking about real people here. The same people that listened to the adults in their lives when they told us that a college degree was supposed to ensure “a million more dollars over the course of a life than a high school diploma.” Were they all lying?

The new trend involves college graduates not being sure if the field they are trained or currently working in will even be around 10 years from now. And, most scary, it’s not just white collar support jobs in factories that are being moved overseas or cut altogether. It’s happening in many highly specialized, well-paying job fields. One thing is clear, job security for professionals is quickly becoming as obsolete as the 8-track.

What happens when a majority of Ohioans’ taxes are done in Delhi, India instead of Dayton? With 45,000 professional accountants working in Ohio, making an average of $57 K a year, what work will they be able to find that pays anything close to that if those jobs go overseas? Should they join one of the 100,000 office clerks in Ohio making $23,400 a year? They’d better hurry up because over a million U.S. office jobs are predicted to be shipped overseas in the next 7 years too.

What happens when Ohioan’s x-rays are read at the Calcutta Clinic instead of the Cleveland Clinic? That’s 10,000 unemployed radiologists at $44,000 a year. How about on-line college classes being taught by someone in Chengdu, China instead of someone in Columbus? The average Chinese college professor makes $137 U.S. bucks a month. Ohio’s 490 economics professors make over $6,500 a month.

And what happens when Ohio’s nearly 3,000 architectural jobs (at $67,000 per) start leaving places like Toledo for places like Taipei. Alright, that may be a stretch. How many would-be Frank Lloyd Wrights are really kicking it in Toledo? You get the point though. Where are these well-paid professionals going to find comparable pay if their jobs go overseas?

We all know Ohio is an aging state, but really, how many high-paying pharmaceutical sales rep jobs can we sustain?

While free trade advocates will tell you that there have been more American winners with globalization than losers, the question we need to be asking ourselves is this. Will the “losers” in globalization be able to transition into “winning” job fields? What infrastructure does Ohio, and the rest of the nation, have in place to help displaced 30 and 40 year old (and older) professional workers? Get back to me when you come up with an answer.

This should give you a clue. When I Googled the phrase: “job training programs for professional workers in Ohio,” the first entry to appear was an article written in1985. The second entry was from 1991. The sad truth is that there are no widespread programs for unemployed (or under-employed) professional workers.

Currently, it’s everyman for himself. And judging by declining income levels, “everyman” is getting his butt kicked. How else can we explain away the fact that “most workers today take home less pay per hour, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1973?”

For those of us lucky to have job security, the answers may seem obvious. “Go back to college. Buckle your chinstrap. Quit whining and go out and get a better job. Shoot, work two jobs if you have to. Just get it done.” While the tough love approach sounds great, how realistic is it for someone in their 30’s or 40’s to drop everything and go back to college for years at a time? How are they going to pay their bills, take care of their families, and put in the necessary time studying while being able to afford skyrocketing (pdf) college tuition costs (estimated to be $10,000 a year (pdf) in Ohio by 2009)? Sure, it can be done. But so can winning the lottery. Even if they do get a degree, the job picture awaiting them is pathetic.

Look at the classified job ads in any Ohio city. It could literally read: “Welcome to the wonderful world of restaurant management—today’s “good” middle-class job.” And, with props to Jerry Seinfeld, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.” But there is something really scary about it. Did people rack up thousands in college loans (the average college grad is now over $19,000 in the hole when she graduates) just to contribute to the fattening of America by managing a fast-food restaurant? I don’t think so.

Throw in inflation concerns, record high gas prices that could reach $4 a gallon this year, unsustainable health care increases that have gone up 80% since 2000 (now costing the average family over $12,00 a year), child care costs that make you scream “mommy” (30% of single parents’ incomes), and our long-term economic outlook is beyond bleak. But that’s not all.

Don’t forget about tightening loan requirements or that the average Ohio household owes almost $10,000 in credit card debt. What about rising property taxes at the very time property values are declining almost everywhere? Add all of this up and it’s a recipe for disaster. Ohio’s families won’t be able to borrow their way to a middle-class existence for much longer.

Worse still, Ohio leads the nation in home foreclosures. At least this news comes with a silver lining though. Ohio beat back a strong Michigan challenge for the top spot. Not to be outdone however, Michigan still tops Ohio with the nation’s highest unemployment rate. Ohio ranks 7th worst.

Surely Ohio’s leaders have been busy working on sensible ways to soften these blows, right? At the very least they’re using the bully pulpit to give these issues a fair public hearing, no? While Ohio’s governor, Ted Strickland, should be commended for freezing college tuition costs in Ohio for the next two years, there is very little else being done to deal with the current economic trends. There’s no push to help create new well-paying jobs in Ohio. There’s no significant investment in technology. Nothing innovative is being done to improve upon our unconstitutional educational system. Come to think of it, it’s as if the whole state is in a state of denial.

Where’s the call to action? Where’s the widespread public push to get more service-industry jobs to become unionized? Where’s the business communities’ plans for growth? Where’s the investment in the next generation of workers? Does anyone really care that the once-booming Ohio economy has slowly become a giant inland strip mall, full of retail shops and food courts? The biggest threat to our long-term security and stability isn’t terrorism. It isn’t an invasion of “brown” people either. No, the biggest threat to the United States’ long-term prosperity is what’s happening right before our eyes in Ohio. It’s the destruction of our middle-class. Now if we could just get anyone to care.

Kevin Curran is a teacher in the Cincinnati Public School System. He has been teaching since 2000, with the last seven years spent in CPS. During the 2006-2007 school year, over 92% of his students in 10th grade U.S. History passed the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT); compared to the state average of 76%. Mr. Curran believes that parents play the most important role in determining the academic success of students.