You scratch my back, and I'll whip yours...

There is an old saying about politics, "You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours." However, that does not apply to Ohio and the Bush Administration. Ohio was crucial to both Bush victories, but as the Plain Dealer online site cleveland.com notes, the favor was not repaid. In fact, he shows that Ohio is much worse off than it was in 2000.

"The U.S. economy's eight-year roller-coaster run of decline, recovery then more decline has left Ohio with the second-worst record of job loss in the nation, a private economist says.

"Of the 50 states, only Michigan, with its 'unprecedented, Depression-level' loss of 496,900 jobs since 2000, or 10.5 percent of its work force, exceeded Ohio's decline of 213,300 jobs. The Ohio total accounted for a 3.8 percent drop in employment between September 2000 and September 2008, according to Charles McMillion, president and chief economist of MBG Information Services in Washington, D.C. ...

"'I've analyzed jobs data closely in Ohio and Michigan. These two states, especially, have just had eight awful years,' he said in a phone interview. 'Even before the current downturn, a lot of people, including me, had become terrified about what's happening there, where you depend economically so much on manufacturing jobs.'

"His tally revealed that the nation added 5 million jobs over the eight years he studied, a 3.8 percent increase in overall employment. That might not seem too dreadful.

"To put that figure into perspective, though, McMillion came to a startling finding
in his national jobs analysis: 'This 3.8 percent gain is by far the weakest eight-year gain in jobs on record back to 1939.'

"'That was the year, in the latter period of the nation's Great Depression, when the government began tabulating jobs data in the manner it still uses. That makes the data comparable.'

"McMillion said the previous worst eight-year job market was from 1953 to 1961, when job creation grew 8.3 percent -- more than twice the recent rate. In order for unemployment to remain flat, the country must generate an increasing number of new jobs each year. That's because the population grows two ways: Births outnumber deaths, and immigration accounts for a considerable number of new residents who often become job seekers. Important to Ohio and other states in the Great Lakes industrial region, the U.S. manufacturing sector has lost 22.2 percent of its jobs since 2000. McMillion's analysis shows that the decline was 2.5 times the percentage loss for any eight-year period since monthly data began flowing 69 years ago.

"The latest report shows how each of six job sectors fared in Ohio. Over the eight years, construction and manufacturing took the biggest dives. Construction shed 10.6 percent of workers, while manufacturing lost a whopping 25.4 percent, or 257,600 jobs.

"Meanwhile, private education and health services grew to become the biggest sector, with 804,300 employees, up 17.3 percent since 2000. Government remained second, growing 10.2 percent to 787,600 jobs in Ohio. McMillion said much of that has been in public schools, colleges and universities. Over these eight years, the country spent $5 trillion more on imports than it made from exports. ..."

Virtual buckeye to De Magno Opere.