From Matt Mayer:

THE Ohio job market is in tatters. It has been weak for two decades. New unemployment data suggest an even more troubling outlook.

If Ohioans want a vibrant job market, we must start making tough choices to defang entrenched interests, notably labor unions and big government. The failure to act will only ensure that more Ohio businesses move to states where they can create jobs free of artificially expensive labor costs and inflexibility, and an overly burdensome government.

The Buckeye Institute’s new report, “State of the State: Two Decades of Weak Job Growth and Skyrocketing Government Costs Pose Daunting Challenges to Ohioans” states that when the U.S. economy boomed in the 1990s, Ohio’s job growth was just the 37th best in America. And when the economy went bust after the dotcom/technology crashes in 2000, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the housing/financial crash in 2008, Ohio lost more jobs than every other state except Michigan.

Between 1990 and last year, Ohio had the third-worst job market in the United States. Over two decades, the number of nonfarm, nongovernment jobs in our state increased by a mere 79,900 – fewer than 4,000 jobs a year in a state of more than 11.4 million people.

One reason for Ohio’s weak job market is its pro-union policies. The 28 states that force workers to join a union had average increases in jobs from 1990 until now of 16 percent, or less than 1 percent per year. The 22 states that protect a worker’s economic freedom had average increases in jobs of 36 percent, more than twice the rate of pro-union states.

Read the rest here.

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