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Ohio, Montgomery Co. ‘under siege’ as jobs disappear

Roger Blair lost his job at Siemans in Urbana. His job was outsourced to Mexico. Now he works for a temporary service and tries to keep house and home together. He says,

Barbara J. Perenic Roger Blair lost his job at Siemans in Urbana. His job was outsourced to Mexico. Now he works for a temporary service and tries to keep house and home together. He says, "You just have to keep on trucking. Otherwise it's easy to get down."

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By Ken McCall, Steve Bennish and Tim Tresslar
Staff Writer Updated 2:06 AM Sunday, April 17, 2011

DAYTON — Montgomery County endured the steepest slide in payroll earnings among all metro counties in Ohio during the past decade, a Dayton Daily News examination shows.

Annual private payrolls dropped about $3 billion — from $11.4 billion in 2000 when adjusted for inflation to $8.3 billion by 2010 — according to data from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. That 27 percent slide is the biggest percentage decline among Ohio’s six large metro counties, all of which lost to some degree.

Since 2000, Ohio’s total annual private payroll dropped by $22 billion, the examination found, a devastating economic implosion that hit every aspect of Ohio’s economy — from grocery stores, restaurants and retail to government budgets and beyond. As one telling indicator, the Ohio Department of Education said the proportion of youngsters receiving federally subsidized school lunches has reached a record high of four for every 10 students.

“It’s not a bright picture right now,” said Roger Blair who lost his manufacturing job, as did his wife Cheryl, when Siemens Energy & Automation closed plants in Urbana and Bellefontaine in 2009 and exported the jobs to Mexico.

Roger is working again, but the Logan County family’s income has been cut in half and will drop further when Cheryl’s unemployment benefits run out.

“I don’t have any benefits,” said Roger of his job working as a contractor. “I don’t have insurance, no type of future benefits, either.”

The vanishing wages that the Blairs and countless other Ohio families are experiencing come as legions of manufacturing and other higher wage jobs disappear amid accelerating global trade and enormous international trade deficits. Those deficits punished Ohio, where manufacturing has long undergirded the state’s economic might and provided entry to the middle class.

The question is, what can Ohio do to get out of the hole?

In his state budget, Gov. John Kasich unveiled concepts he says are designed to make Ohio more competitive, including reducing the size of government and tax burdens on businesses and individuals. But the reasons for the lost wages and the 600,000 jobs they represent may go beyond what a governor alone can do to rebuild Ohio. Interviews with business executives, labor experts and international economists as well as U.S. Senators Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown show widespread agreement that Ohio has been forced to operate on a tilted playing field.

And it’s not getting any better. Consider the U.S. experience with China. The U.S.-China trade deficit was $273 billion in 2010, up from about $226.9 billion in 2009. (The figure is the difference between what we import from China versus what we export there.) A trade deficit means that rather than producing goods or commodities we use every day here in the United States — supporting U.S. jobs — they are imported.

Driving the lopsided trade is that the Chinese value their currency far below its true value, under-pricing U.S. goods. And that’s not all. Protracted trade disputes that threaten even more local jobs have ensnared key Miami Valley industrial employers such as NewPage and AK Steel.

“I have told one Chinese delegation after another that we don’t like the fact that you manipulate your currency,” Kasich said in his State of the State address. “And it will stop.”

But neither Congress nor President Obama, appears poised to right a regime that’s erased huge swaths of the U.S. economy — especially in the industrial Midwest — stifled job growth and clobbered state and local finances.

Brown, a Democrat who voted against numerous trade deals, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, said he is not anti-trade. “I want more trade,” he said. “I just want it under rules that are fair to workers in all countries. Other countries practice trade according to their national interest. We practice trade according to an economics textbook that’s 20 years out of date.”

Portman, a Republican who served as United States Trade Representative under George W. Bush, said China should be labeled a currency manipulator, which could trigger sanctions. But the U.S. Treasury on Feb. 4, declined to cite China as a manipulator, a mistake in Portman’s view.

“It is real and it does affect Ohio manufacturers,” Portman said. “The currency is undervalued by 25 to 50 percent. It does affect our ability to export fairly.”

A Daily News query to the U.S. Treasury Department was referred to Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner’s statement on March 31 that cited concern over “weaknesses and inconsistencies in the approaches that govern exchange rate policy.” He added that the U.S. has “been engaged in a careful multilateral effort” to mitigate sources of future economic imbalances.

“We hope to see it gain more traction over time,” Geithner said.

Meanwhile, the number of employers are declining. In Montgomery County, private sector employers — defined as any company with a payroll — shrank from 10,105 in 2000 to 8,851 in 2010. Statewide, the total slumped from 241,062 to 215,406 — a drop of 25,656 companies. In a decade, the average private sector wage in Ohio has risen from $32,245 to about $40,000, but when inflation is factored in, the increase vanishes.

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