September 04, 2023
September 04, 2023
This July, Ohio reached a critical milestone. The state posted the largest number of jobs in its history: 5,639,200. Reaching this benchmark was especially important because the previous peak was more than 23 years ago, in May 2000. The July jobs number is preliminary, so we could learn that the true milestone came a month or so before or after, but what’s clear is that Ohio’s recovery from the COVID-created recession stands in stark contrast to the two decades prior, in which the state’s recoveries from recessions were slow and incomplete. This could be a turning point for the state. After decades in which corporations held wages nearly flat and captured most of the economic gains made possible by Ohio’s working people, the labor market is tilting in favor of workers.
Many of the challenges made more acute by the pandemic were not new. They were the result of longstanding structural shortfalls in our labor market’s ability to deliver a high quality of life to all those who spent their lives working. What remains to be seen is how well we use the lessons learned to forge lasting change to the way Ohioans live and work that enable all people to thrive.
Today Ohio’s strong labor market is more favorable to working people than at any time since the Great Recession and, by some measures, much longer. This tight labor market is the labor market Ohio needs. This is long overdue good news that policymakers should sustain as long as possible to reverse the setbacks working people have faced over the last two decades of plunder. Year after year, corporations and the wealthiest have held wages flat for middle-income earners and pushed them down for some, even as working people make the state wealthier than it’s ever been.[1] The strong labor market is also vital to pressure employers to hire those workers most marginalized in the labor market. Unemployment rates for Black workers have consistently run double that of their white counterparts in good economic times and bad, for as long as the data have been kept. No policy attempt has yet succeeded in getting employers to hire Black workers at parity with their white counterparts. With that reality, and with inadequate policy in place to support equity in education and on the job, it takes a very tight labor market to force employers in aggregate to overcome bias, discrimination and systemic failings to hire the Black women and men still most likely to be sidelined from work.
Ohio’s statewide jobs recovery masks sustained challenges in a majority of Ohio communities to recover the jobs lost to the COVID recession. Just four of Ohio’s 11 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) had more jobs by July than they did before the pandemic recession. Strong growth predominantly around Cincinnati and Columbus is creating opportunities for people there and boosting the statewide jobs total, but jobs have yet to fully return to most Ohio communities. Ohio’s low unemployment rate is remarkably good, but it is only historically low because some 100,000 Ohioans have yet to come back to the workforce. While some have opted out of work, others struggle to manage childcare along with paid work.
Despite low unemployment, many Ohio jobs remain poor quality and many employers still pay poorly. Low wages hurt all workers but especially harm Black workers and other workers of color, women and migrant workers — all of whom are especially likely to be underpaid. Their disproportionate representation in low-paid jobs is the result of structural racism and sexism, rooted in chattel slavery. Until we confront and dismantle its legacy, we will continue to tolerate economic outcomes that systematically undervalue the contributions of specific working people based on their status as members of affected demographic groups. That includes undervaluing the occupations in which these workers are overrepresented.[2] We must confront these issues now.
The strong labor market has set up a clash between working people whose power – mostly through organized labor – is resurgent after decades of losses and a corporate lobby still determined to secure a steady supply of cheap labor by getting more creative about the pools of people it can force into low-paid work. Ohioans are making demands for better pay and working conditions after decades of wage suppression That includes demands for greater flexibility to care for their families, with benefits such as paid family and medical leave, and remote or hybrid workplaces with some work done from home so that working parents can care for children. Meanwhile firms are broadening their sights to consider new groups of workers. That includes progress — such as opening opportunities to Ohioans harmed by the criminal legal system — and concerning trends, such as lobbying lawmakers to clear pathways to staff children for later shifts on school nights.
It remains to be seen whether working people’s new expectations of work that arose in response to the trauma and instability wrought by COVID-19 will persist as permanent structural changes to employment arrangements or be defeated by corporate attempts to suppress them.
Key findings
Ohio has restored the number of jobs lost to COVID-19. However, that recovery was confined to just four metro areas with significant job growth, while most Ohio communities continue to face jobs shortfalls.By some measures, Ohio is experiencing the tightest labor market in a generation. That is, jobs are relatively plentiful compared to the number of workers. This report will delve into many facets of that story: how a jobs boom concentrated in some parts of the state has driven Ohio as a whole to record job numbers, but left large swaths of the state with fewer jobs than before the COVID recession; how strong demand for workers is helping them to negotiate better wages and terms of work with their employers; how – in effort to retain a steady supply of cheap labor — some employers are trying to tap new and more vulnerable pools of workers or lobby the legislature to put more workers in that category; and how the tight labor market is opening new doors to long-marginalized people and better enabling them to participate in work and share in prosperity.
Ohio needs a tight labor market with strong demand for workers. Today’s tight labor market is vital to restore decades of suppressed wage growth, during which workers produced more wealth than ever, but corporations and the wealthiest captured most of the gains. It is also vital to overcoming labor market discrimination and pushing employers to hire those Ohioans frequently marginalized — especially Black working people whose unemployment rate trends at double that of white counterparts in good economic times and bad. Today’s tight labor market supports wage growth because, unlike in most years in recent history, employers are forced to compete for workers instead of workers competing for too few jobs to go around. Working people at the bottom of the pay scale have achieved real wage gains –gains that exceed inflation – throughout the course of the pandemic.
Having unfilled jobs is far better than having people out of work: Most Ohioans rely on wages to survive. While a job opening with no takers limits a business’s ability to grow, it also signals that the labor market is working as it should: by matching workers to jobs where they can be most effective. A company that struggles to hire can overcome this constraint by reworking its business plan. This is how the labor market is supposed to work. It is supposed to motivate workers to move to the jobs where they can realize the highest pay and best working arrangements. The firms that offer the best can do so because they are the most effective at putting employees to work on high-value tasks. When the labor market works in this way, we all benefit.
This strong labor market could help rebalance income distribution, which has been out of whack for decades because corporations and the wealthiest have successfully rigged the rules of our economy to their benefit and used their power to capture nearly all the growth working people produced, breaking the link between productivity and pay. While Ohio working people became more productive on the job than ever before, their wages hardly budged. From 1979 to 2021, gross state product per worker grew by 76 percent in Ohio. This means each Ohio worker produced 76% more on average than their counterpart four decades prior. However, wages for the median Ohio worker rose just 4% over that timeframe. See Figure 1. These figures account for the fact that Ohio also added some 994,000 workers over this timeframe (22%). Counting both new workers and their productivity gains, Ohio workers produced twice as much wealth in 2021 as they had in 1979 (101% more).
Figure 1
This outcome makes clear that simply doing well at one’s job does not translate into a good living on its own. To restore balance, Ohio policymakers must pass policies that retain existing high-quality jobs and improve the quality of now low-paid service sector jobs, which make up a growing share of our jobs mix. This means supporting high wages directly with a minimum wage that meets the cost of living and supporting workers’ ability to form unions that help them counterbalance concentrated corporate power. Policy Matters Ohio’s May Day report, A New Way Forward, lays out a 10-point policy strategy to support working people in Ohio. An overview of the policies is included at the end of this report.[3]
Ohio fully recovered our pre-COVID jobs level in May 2023, then went on to post the highest number of jobs in the state’s history by July, with 5,639,200 jobs.[4] These job numbers are preliminary and will undergo a revision in September and a benchmark in March 2024 for improved accuracy, so we may later learn that the milestone was reached a month or so sooner or later than first identified, but this figure is consistent with the strong growth trend of recent months and represents a major breakthrough.
Figure 2
Recovering the jobs lost to COVID-19 in less than half the time it took to recover jobs form the Great Recession is a triumph for good public policy. Whereas the prior recovery was slowed by austerity policies that choked off government spending when it was needed most, the federal response to the COVID recession was scaled to the size of the crisis.
In a recession, individuals and businesses cut back on spending to preserve their bottom line, a response that can deepen the cycle. But the government — accountable to the public as a whole — commands enough resources and is sufficiently coordinated to restore enough spending to end a recession. Economists have understood this for nearly a century.[5] But in 2011 when the U.S. was still struggling to overcome the Great Recession, Republican Congress members forced spending cuts as a precondition for raising the debt ceiling, a stunt first used in that crisis which they have since repeated.[6] Reducing public spending when it was needed most made that recovery the slowest since the Great Depression. The federal response to the COVID recession was different. By pushing unprecedented levels of aid out to individuals, businesses, and state and local governments, federal policymakers spared many families from being financially ruined by unemployment, prevented widespread business closures and jumpstarted a rapid recovery that has led to the strong growth economy we enjoy today.
This recovery also benefitted from the fact that the COVID recession was caused by the necessary stay-at-home orders issued in Ohio and other states to protect residents and prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. Absent COVID-19, there was no underlying economic reason for recession, meaning many businesses were able to quickly resume operations when it was once again safe to do so. This too represents good policy: Congress paid businesses who retained workers in the downturn, and made robust unemployment payments to laid-off workers so that they stood ready to go back on the job.
Today’s record jobs level has been decades in the making. Until this July, Ohio had never regained all the jobs lost to the early 2000’s recession. The state’s previous record was 5,638,000 jobs in May 2000. Over the last two decades, Ohio has only barely or nearly restored job losses from each downturn before the next occurred to set the job market back again. It took Ohio 117 months to fully recover the number of jobs it had in March 2006, on the eve of the Great Recession.[7] Over the same time, the U.S. added nearly 19 million jobs (17.4%) — enough to insulate it against the shock from the COVID recession. COVID did not reduce the U.S. back to year 2000 job levels.
By contrast, Ohio employers cut much more steeply in bad economic times, then only added enough jobs to reduce deficits during recovery years, never fully restoring jobs to their peak[8] — until now. This new peak is good news, but it’s tempered by the fact that in the time since the previous peak, Ohio's population has grown by 392,500 people.[9] That growth rate (3.5%) is modest — but it is 162 times the growth rate of Ohio jobs over the same timeframe (0.02%).
Because of these slow recoveries, past recessions have harmed working people with periods of joblessness and suppressed wages that persisted for years of their working lives. Slow job growth has limited work opportunities for job-seekers and the abundance of available workers competing for too few jobs enabled firms to hold wages down broadly, making it very difficult for working people to win pay increases commensurate with their productivity growth. Today, the relative scarcity of workers for available jobs flips that script, opening opportunities for workers to find better jobs or renegotiate for better terms at the ones they’ve got.
Figure 3
Today’s tight labor market is vital to restore decades of suppressed wage growth and to extend recovery and new opportunity to marginalized working people. Though workers in much of the state are leveraging the tight labor market, many Ohioans live in communities it has yet to reach.
Jobs recovery has not reached all parts of the stateFigure 4
Columbus and Cincinnati are enjoying the benefits of a job mix different from that of much of the state. Most of Ohio’s cities grew as manufacturing hubs and most have depopulated as manufacturing jobs have been eliminated due to offshoring and automation.[12] Columbus and Cincinnati have more diverse economies, including large universities; headquarters of banking, insurance and other large firms; and a large market for information technology jobs.[13]
Policymakers have invested enormous resources into efforts to attract new private sector jobs to Central Ohio, most notably over $2 billion to Intel Corporation to build two semiconductor plants. These strategies fuel a low-road strategy that pits states and communities against one another to attract powerful corporations with incentives that extract needed revenue from the community and shift the added infrastructure costs onto other taxpayers. Incentives often lack transparency, and firms have been known to renege on their commitments, as General Motors did when it shuttered the Lordstown Chevy Cruze plant.[14] An alternative strategy would focus on longer term, better distributed development. Investing in teachers and child care could increase jobs across the state and improve outcomes for kids.
Ohioans are leaving jobs for better onesFigure 5
Workforce participation[16] in Ohio never rebounded from Great RecessionOhio’s workforce participation rate has never again approached its peak of 67.8%, reached in 2007 just before the Great Recession. COVID-19 sent many Ohioans home from work and some have yet to return to the job market. The labor force shrunk by 359,000 people from February to April of 2020. Most Ohioans who left the labor force have since returned or been replaced by new job seekers, but 101,000 Ohioans remained out of the workforce by June 2022, making the workforce smaller by 1.7%.[20] Workforce participation reached 62.1% in July 2023.[21]
Figure 6
Employment-to-population ratio[22] remains below the ‘07 peakAs Figure 7 shows, the employment to population ratio (EPOP) for prime-aged Ohioans (25 to 54) has recovered since 2020, and reached 82.6% by 2022, showing that people who are in their prime working years are, in fact, working. Ohio’s prime-age EPOP is slightly better than the nation’s, which was 79.9% in 2022. Though Ohioans in prime working age were slightly less likely to be in the workforce than in the last period of growth ended by the Great Recession, they worked (or sought jobs) at higher rates than in most of the long recovery from that recession. The growth in the share of prime age Ohioans working throughout the 1980’s likely reflects more women entering the workforce. On the whole, these numbers suggest that Ohio’s aging population is a major factor suppressing employment and workforce participation. But with prime-age EPOP 2 points below its 2007 peak of 84.7%, policymakers should also address challenges sidelining people in their prime working years. One major priority should be providing adequate and affordable child care.[23]
Figure 7
Ohio is also contending for the first time with a shrinking population. Due largely to COVID-19, a record number of Ohioans died in 2020 when the state lost 143,600 people, then again in 2021 when 147,500 Ohioans died.[24] 2020 was the first year that deaths exceeded births for the state (by 14,000). Ohio’s population is projected to continue to fall through 2050. Among all age groups, only those aged 75+ are expected to increase in population by then.
Disaggregating workforce participation data helps explain why Ohio struggles to rebuild its workforce. Figure 8 shows the workforce participation rate and employment-to-population ratio for various groups of Ohioans. Ohio’s aging population is a major driver of the state’s reduced workforce participation rate. In 2022, 18.4% of Ohioans were aged 65+.[25] Workers aged 55 and up were the age group most likely to leave the workforce during COVID-19 and not return. Their participation fell 3.6 points (9.0%) from 2019 to 2022. Young people aged 16 to 24 increased their participation by about as many points (3.7 points, 6.0%). Those in their prime working age were only slightly less likely to work or seek work by 2022 as they had been in 2019, down 0.7 percentage points.
Figure 8
By race, Black Ohioans were the only group to increase workforce participation from 2019 to 2022, up 1.3 points (2.1%). White Ohioans left the workforce by 2.3 points (-2.7%), indicating that they may have had more options available to them to leave work. Hispanic[26] workers’ participation fell 6.6 points (9.5%), a notable drop that may reflect their disproportionate representation in jobs that were shuttered by COVID-19. Notably, though Black Ohioans were more likely to be working or seeking work than their Hispanic or white counterparts by 2022, they were employed at no higher rate than the other groups. Though workforce participation for Black Ohioans was 3 points higher than white counterparts at 64%, just 59% of each group had a job.
Ohioans across race are about equally likely to participate in the workforce and to have jobs by 2022, except for those Ohioans the survey categorized as belonging to “other” races. The “other races” category and label used by the Census Bureau include people of diverse backgrounds, from Indigenous people to residents of Asian origin. They are grouped together because they represent small populations and too few of them are counted in the survey that makes up the dataset to reliably report on without combining populations. It is important to recognize that this category aggregates many people of diverse backgrounds; better measurement is needed to understand their unique challenges. Over a third of Ohioans of other races left the workforce from 2019 to 2022, a remarkable change that is difficult to understand without more information about who they are.
Rates of workforce participation were higher for those with higher educational attainment, and more-educated workers were less likely to leave the workforce during COVID-19. Workers with a college degree were most likely to have benefits such as the ability to work from home during the pandemic. Notably, even Ohioans with some college were more likely to be working or seeking work than those whose highest education level was high school, even though the “some college” cohort includes active students who have yet to graduate.
Men and women[27] in the workforceWomen’s workforce participation was even lower than men’s, at 56.1% in 2022, a low not seen since 1988. When the data series began in 1979, only half of women were in the workforce, compared with 80% of men. But women were already joining the job market in record numbers as their male counterparts left it, narrowing the gap in workforce participation. That trend reversed with the Great Recession, when women’s workforce participation began to fall along with men’s. Women were displaced by COVID more than men and were more likely to leave the workforce altogether. COVID-19 dramatically increased the workload of caregiving tasks, which were largely picked up by women. Barriers to work, like child care and low pay, prevent women from moving back in. Figure 9 shows men’s and women’s long-term workforce participation.
Figure 9
Various factors limit women’s freedom to participateEven where child care is available, it is costly — often prohibitively so. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defines the cost of child care as burdensome if it exceeds 7% of a family’s budget. In Ohio, infant care for a single child costs 16.9% of the median family’s budget on average ($9,687 a year). Child care for a 4-year-old averages 13.8% ($7,895).[29] In other words, most Ohio families with young children (not just those with low incomes) have been priced out or burdened by the cost of child care. This is despite the low wages paid to caregivers, which have driven an exodus from that field. COVID-19 exacerbated the challenges by permanently shuttering 798 child care programs across Ohio.[30] Today, 39% of Ohioans live in a child care desert.[31] The problem is especially acute outside of Ohio’s major cities.[32]
The cost of paid child care is so high it can factor into parents’ — especially mothers’ — decision to stay at home with their own child or work in the paid labor market. Families face significant costs either way: in child care tuition or a parent’s forgone earnings. The disruption can reduce the person’s earnings for the remainder of her working life, and contribute to the persistent gender pay gap. As of 2022, women ages 25 to 34 were paid 92% as much as men of the same ages, but women ages 35 to 44 and 45 to 54 were paid 83% as much and women 55 to 64 just 79% as much. This means that while women face a pay gap starting their careers, the time many women spend juggling work and family pushes them even further behind over the course of their lives.[33] A family’s rational response to these wage gaps — for the lower-paid parent to take a break from work to care for children — can reinforce pay suppression for women caused by other factors.
Providing enough high-quality child care at affordable costs must be a priority for policymakers seeking to grow Ohio’s workforce. That will require them to ensure that child care workers are paid a livable wage that recognizes the value of the vital work they do: at least $20 per hour. Ohio pays providers of publicly funded child care so little the state was sued and forced to increase the amounts.[34] For too long, Ohio has foisted the high cost of quality care onto the people doing it, in the form of poverty-level wages that make it difficult for child care workers to provide for their own families’ needs. This is one factor contributing to Ohio’s persistent shortage of child care workers. A proposed federal rule would make child care more affordable for families by capping copayments at the 7% income threshold HHS recommends, and increase the amount the government pays to providers, which would stabilize them and enable them to increase wages to retain staff.[35]
For decades, employers have suppressed working people’s ability to bargain for wages that reflect their worth, and in some cases even for pay that covers basic living costs. But a tight labor market can drive up wages, and there are signs that is beginning to happen.
Wages in Ohio and the U.S.
Wages have risen in Ohio and the nation since 1979, though, as Figure 1 showed, not nearly as much as worker productivity. In Ohio, pay growth lagged the U.S. and workers experienced long periods of losses. Median hourly pay in Ohio was $21.51 in 2022, leaving it $1.37 short of the national median of $22.88. Pay for both Ohio and the U.S. grew during the recovery from the Great Recession but fell from 2021 to 2022, largely owing to historically high inflation. All wages are adjusted for inflation and reported in 2022 dollars. See Figure 10.
Figure 10
Wages for both Ohio and the U.S. reflect competing trends. For instance, higher educational attainment tends to push wages up over time and may be one factor boosting wages for the U.S. higher than in Ohio, where educational attainment is lower. Ohio’s relatively higher union representation in the past may account for its higher wages at the start of the series. Since then, loss of union density has hurt workers’ ability to bargain for higher wages in both Ohio and the U.S., but Ohio fell further than the nation. These losses are due to corporate union busting, offshoring of once unionized domestic operations, automation, and other tactics.
The wage reversal that put Ohio below the national average is a setback for the state, which was once a destination for working people seeking opportunity. During the labor shortages of World War I, Ohio industries attracted Black southerners who were the descendants of enslaved people to its tire and rubber factories, iron works, railroads, and coal mines, where they could earn double the wages available back home.[36] They met with opportunity, but sometimes also violence at the hands of residents resentful of competition for jobs or motivated by racism. Ohio cities likewise attracted people from the mines and railroad construction of Appalachia. In 1979, the median Ohio wage was significantly higher than that of the U.S. As recently as 2001, Ohio’s median wage still exceeded the nation’s.
Ohio is still a destination for workers seeking job opportunity, but today’s cohort consists of immigrants born outside of the U.S. They face challenges including low pay, hazardous working conditions, and precarious job security.[37] The Migration Policy Institute estimates that 89,000 undocumented people are in Ohio, with just five countries of origin accounting for 65% of them: Mexico (26,000), India (14,000), Guatemala (8,000), China/Hong Kong (6,000), and El Salvador (5,000).[38] While some are migrants who intend to return home, 67% are Ohioans who have resided in the U.S. for more than five years. Among the 83,000 aged 16+, 67% are working or seeking work, giving them a workforce participation rate about 5 points higher than the population overall. Without the influx of migrants, Ohio’s labor force and population decline would be even steeper. These workers build wealth for Ohio and they deserve the same protections as all other working people.
Higher wage growth for top-paid workers widens inequalityDisaggregating wage data by income class shows how the highest-paid working people have captured much of the wage growth seen since 1979, except in the COVID era. Ohio’s 90th percentile worker — the worker paid more than 90% of all workers — was paid $47.90 per hour in 2022 and saw pay growth of $10.19 (27.0%) over the past four decades, three times the increase of the next highest, $3.63, which went to the 80th percentile. Workers in the 20th percentile, paid $14.92 in 2022, saw growth of $2.44 per hour since 1979.
Figure 11 shows pay growth from 1979 to 2019 in blue, then from 2019 to 2022 in red — most Ohioans experienced losses — and finally the total change in pay since 1979 in gray. While highly paid workers fared better than everyone else in the job market, their pay growth also fell far short of both overall economic growth over the same timeframe, and corporate profits. CEO pay nationally[39] grew 1460% from 1978 to 2021. The median CEO among Ohio’s biggest employers that trade on the stock market was paid 396 times as much as their company’s median worker in 2021.[40]
Figure 11
Figure 12 shows the median pay of workers in each decile. Generally, people in Ohio have too little to cover the basics, despite working. MIT’s living wage calculator finds that a single childless adult needs $15.33 per hour of full-time work to meet the cost of living in Ohio. That is more than the bottom 20% of workers are paid.[41] A family with two children and two parents working full time needs an average hourly wage of $24.53 per worker to make ends meet, meaning Ohioans aren’t paid enough to support a small family until they reach the 60th percentile of all working people in the state.
Figure 12
Figure 13 shows that, for workers in most earnings groups, pay in Ohio generally remains flat over many years, and has occasionally fallen. The rare periods of pay growth for workers are critical. Policymakers should work to prolong this one, and make them more common in the future.
Figure 13
The gender pay gap narrowed until the Great Recession, then persistedFigure 14
This figure also shows a changing relationship between men’s and women’s pay. At the start of the series, men’s pay fell in most years, while women’s pay rose. Then, beginning in the late 1990’s, men’s and women’s pay began trending in the same direction from one year to the next, growing together until the early 2000’s when pay began to flatten for both. This appears to indicate that, from the late 1970’s, men and women faced two largely distinct labor markets. This could reflect significant occupational segregation: men and women were directed into different jobs. Women’s pay growth coincides with much greater entry into the workforce among groups of women from middle- and higher-income families who did not previously participate in paid work. Rising pay for women could reflect the higher educational attainment of those women entering the workforce. Beginning in the mid-nineties, trends that affected both men and women in the workforce may have become stronger than gender-specific ones, yet women’s pay trails that of men.
Wage suppression for Black Ohioans and a widening pay gap undercut Civil Rights era goalsUnlike the gender pay gap, the gap between Black and white Ohioans’ pay has grown. By this metric, Ohio has backslid on racial equity. In 1979, Black workers were paid 92 cents for each dollar paid to a white worker. By 2022, that figure fell to 85 cents. Not only were Black Ohioans paid less compared with their white counterparts; they were paid less overall. Median pay for Black Ohioans fell 59 cents between 1979 and 2022, from $19.37 to $18.78. Over the same time white Ohioans’ pay rose 98 cents (from $21.10 to $22.08). This is all despite Black Ohioans having stronger labor market attachment[43] than their white counterparts. See Figure 15.
Figure 15
The net decline in Black workers’ wages since 1979 was borne entirely by Black men. As Figure 16 shows, Black men’s wages were pushed down $3.92 per hour since 1979, a decrease of 16.4%. This figure includes substantial pay growth of $1.40 per hour (7.5%) for the median Black man for the single year from 2021 to 2022. That large fluctuation could in part reflect data irregularity from the relatively small sample size of Black men in the dataset.
Over that timeframe, white men lost $2.23 per hour (-8.5%). The racial pay gap for men has doubled from 9.1% in 1979 to 16.9% by 2022. Black men were paid 83 cents on the dollar compared with their white male counterparts in 2022 and 91 cents in 1979.
Due to small sample size, pay trends for Black workers fluctuate substantially year-over-year, but the overall trend is clear: Black men’s pay has been pushed down dramatically by employers since 1979. Data are not shown for workers of other races because there are too few respondents in the sample to show single-year data.
Figure 16
Occupational segregation, undervaluing the work typically done by women and especially women of color, and underpayment within occupations are still embedded in the labor market. The economic goals of the Civil Rights Movement are yet to be fully realized— a fact evinced by disparities across numerous economic and quality of life indicators. Both Black women and men are highly likely to be underemployed.[44] Black women, however, are paid less than any of the other cohorts for whom we have sufficient data today.
Overall, between 1979 and 2022, Black women’s wages remained extremely low, even at their peak, and despite having historically strong labor market participation and employment attachment. At the peak in 2005, the typical Black woman worker was earning $17.89 an hour — 72 cents on the dollar compared with white men. White women were paid 83 cents. Since 1979, wages for Black women grew $1.81 (11.6%), but grew slower than those of white women ($4.90, 32.4%). That means Black women were paid 87 cents for each dollar paid to a white woman. As with their male counterparts, the trendline shows pay fluctuation for Black women likely due to small sample size.
Black women were paid 48 cents more than white women at the median in 1979 when the data began being tracked ($15.59 per hour and $15.11). Black women’s higher pay in the beginning of the trend likely reflects their consistent participation in work,[45] whereas higher pay for white men and social stigmas and bars against white working women among the middle class meant that many did not or could not work outside the home; those who did disproportionately belonged to poor families.
White women’s wages first exceeded wages paid to Black women in 1993. Declining pay for Black men and rising pay for white women converged in 2007. Since then, white women’s wages exceeded Black men’s every year until 2022. One factor driving white women’s pay growth is likely that over time they were able to enter new industries and education previously limited by law and custom to men.
Racial wage gaps persist because policymakers failed to deliver on the promise and potential of the Civil Rights Movement. The march on Washington included specific economic goals including livable wages for all people, deep federal investment into job training, and a commitment to place unemployed workers. Advocates sought and won changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act to include previously excluded workers in agriculture, education, nursing homes and restaurants. The next 60 years instead brought a stagnant minimum wage that policymakers allowed inflation to devalue; falling union coverage; geographic and occupational segregation; discrimination in hiring and pay; and inequitable pathways to education, skills, and promotion.[46] [47]
Persistent pay gaps also reflect a very long history of undervaluing occupations dominated by Black people regardless of gender and women regardless of race. The care economy, tipped work, and agricultural work all comprise disproportionate shares of people of color, and women make up large majorities of child care and restaurant workers. These occupations were excluded from basic employment protections at enactment and some of that legacy persists today. For instance, domestic and agricultural jobs where large numbers of African Americans worked were originally excluded from the 1935 Social Security Act passed in the New Deal in a compromise with white supremacist Southern Democrats.[48] Allowing employers of tipped workers to claim customer tips as a wage subsidy and use them to offset worker pay is likewise a legacy of Jim Crow, when formerly enslaved waitresses and porters were hired to work in restaurants and trains and depended on customer gratuities to survive. Seven states have eliminated the tipped sub-minimum wage; Ohio should too.[49] Reversing pay suppression, especially for Black Ohioans and women, will require significant reforms to reverse legacy policies grounded in racism and to recognize the value of all working people.
Ohio’s unemployment rate reached a record low 3.4% in June 2023. However, the departure of Ohioans from the workforce contributed to that number. An estimated 100,531 fewer Ohioans were in the workforce in June 2023 as compared with February 2020.[50] These Ohioans are not working, but they are not counted among the unemployed because they are not actively seeking work. Had they stayed in the workforce or been replaced by new job-seekers, the unemployment rate would have been 5.1% instead of a historic low. Likewise, the return of jobs to Ohio has been borne by strong growth in just a few parts of the state, which left out a majority of Ohio communities.[51]
Unemployment is not uniform across all groups of working people. Nor does a low general unemployment rate mean that all Ohioans who need a job can secure one, especially a job that offers livable wages, predictable scheduling, respect on the job, safety and long-term economic stability. Focus group participants expressed frustration to Federal Reserve surveyors that they received no follow-up from prospective employers after applying for anywhere from 30 to over 100 jobs.[52]
Double unemployment rate for Black Ohioans underscores the need to sustain strong demand for workersFigure 17
Unlike in past recessions, women unemployed by COVID recession at similar rate to menFigure 18
Public policy choices that have stunted job growth in Ohio over the last two decades have also shifted the job mix from union-dense manufacturing and public sector jobs to lower-paying service sector jobs. Corporations in the service sector have historically limited worker voice on the job and paid correspondingly low wages. The shift to more of these jobs has limited work opportunities for Ohioans to join and remain securely in the middle class. Now, three years into the recovery, the jobs landscape continues to shift. Manufacturing job losses sustained over decades leave the state with half its peak manufacturing jobs, and state and local governments have failed to restore pre-COVID losses, especially for teachers. Low-paying jobs in the leisure and hospitality industry remain unfilled as working people demand better pay and treatment on the job.
Figure 19 shows the mix of jobs in Ohio’s labor market today. As of 2022, trade transportation and utilities was the state’s biggest employer with 19% of Ohio jobs, followed by education and health services (16%). Government jobs still comprised 14%, despite a failure by state and local officials to restore many public sector jobs, especially for teachers. By 2022, once-dominant manufacturing made up just 12% of Ohio jobs.
Figure 19
Long term shifts in job sectorsFigure 20
The COVID recession caused major recent changes to the jobs mixFigure 21
Figure 22
State investments are needed to attract workers to fill critical jobsA national survey found that most students uninterested in teaching reported low pay as a primary reason.[61] Teachers in Ohio were paid 14.4% less than comparably educated workers as of 2021.[62] Under the latest state budget, teachers can be paid as little as $35,000 a year.[63]
The relatively high demand for workers has set up a clash between working people, who are attempting to leverage this moment to secure wage gains after decades of little pay growth, and employers seeking alternative sources of cheap labor. How policymakers respond will decide the outcome. Because wages have been suppressed for so long, policymakers should support workers’ efforts to restore balance. Ohio policymakers have a slate of options available to them, but how the Federal Reserve manages inflation will impact how long this window of strong labor demand stays with us.
Inflation response could stall wage and employment progressThis drop in the inflation rate gives the Federal Reserve (the Fed) room to stop raising interest rates, its primary method for fighting inflation. Higher interest rates are a direct concern for low- and middle- income Ohioans because they raise the cost of credit, particularly raising housing and auto purchase costs. Higher rates also make it more costly for companies to invest, slowing hiring and risking a resurgence of unemployment. The Fed has no tools to address the profit hoarding which has been a primary driver of inflation spikes. [68] Congress does have more targeted tools to fight high inflation, such as an excess profits tax to discourage price gouging, but today with inflation nearly back to normal, both Congress and the Fed can afford a more hands-off approach.
A unique feature of this recovery is that, so far, inflation has abated significantly without the job losses that have accompanied past efforts to slow it.[69] The possibility that inflation could spike once more exists, but so far a strong job market and modest inflation trending downward mark a strong economy. Key priorities must be to sustain it and use this opportunity to help working people reclaim their share of income and extend prosperity to those excluded.
Employers seek access to new sources of cheap laborPublic policy has also been creating new opportunities for formerly incarcerated Ohioans. The Fresh Start Act prohibits state licensing bodies from denying an occupational license to an applicant based on having a felony conviction, unless it was for a violent crime or the license issuer can demonstrate that the conviction makes the applicant unable to perform the job.[75] Ohio Means Jobs should restore a vital tool that helps Ohioans with a conviction and the workforce development professionals helping them to navigate the job market: the Civil Consequences of a Criminal Conviction database (CIVICC), which catalogues Ohio’s collateral sanctions. CIVICC is no longer updated after its contract with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections ran out.[76]
Restoring Ohioans harmed by the criminal legal system requires valuing their work, even behind barsTo truly help — not exploit — workers harmed by the criminal legal system, Ohio prison employment must follow two guidelines. First, no one should ever be forced to participate in work or punished for refusing work. Second, all work must be paid at least the state minimum wage, regardless of whether the person is incarcerated. Failure to adhere to these principles creates a window of opportunity for both the state and private firms to substitute incarcerated workers for free workers and reduce market rate job opportunities in the labor market. Other states have made progress in eliminating this two-tiered labor market. Colorado last year passed legislation mandating that incarcerated workers employed by third parties are entitled to the state minimum wage (currently $13.65 per hour).[80] [81] A bill introduced in Washington state would raise incarcerated workers’ wages to the state minimum of $15.74.[82]
Policymakers should instead implement policies that improve job quality, starting with a minimum wage that meets the cost of living, so that no family must rely on the wages of children to get by.[87]
The business lobby seeks to make unemployment more painfulUnemployment insurance can make or break families, staving off financial ruin in a time of crisis, and in some cases opening doors to the long-term benefit of a better job. It also prevents economic downturns from deepening into more intractable crises by enabling those displaced from work to continue to buy basic goods and services, providing the revenue businesses need to stay afloat. The federal response to COVID-era unemployment showed the power of a robust policy response to keep families afloat and jumpstart the economy. Federal benefits included many workers left out of state systems and paid workers enough to get by, in some cases for the first time.[92] Yet Ohio lawmakers have failed to get the message. In response to the thousands of calls Ohio legislators received from constituents who were out of work and unable to access unemployment compensation benefits, lawmakers set up the Unemployment Compensation Modernization Council to study the problem. Then they disregarded some of the council’s recommendations for improving access, instead cynically passing only anti-fraud measures that will slow approvals and reject more Ohioans’ claims.[93][94] Ohio lawmakers should be making it easier, not more difficult, for Ohioans to access unemployment benefits when displaced from work.
The business lobby supported Issue 1 in attempt to block voter initiative to raise the Ohio minimum wage and other potential pro-worker effortsAs employers seek new sources of cheap labor, working people are leveraging the moment to win higher pay and benefits, through higher education and by joining together in unions.
After growing in the late 1990s, the pay premium for a bachelor’s degree has held fairly steady. By 2021, bachelor’s degree holders were paid $13.21 more than their high school grad counterparts, a premium of 77.3%. It’s clear that, in aggregate and for those Ohioans who could afford to go, college education has been a highly valuable investment in future earnings. However, most Ohio jobs for the foreseeable future do not require education beyond high school, so as more Ohioans finish college, opportunities for them may be limited. According to Ohio Department of Job and Family Services projections, 70.2% of annual job openings through 2030 will require a high school education (39.9%) or have no formal educational requirement (30.3%).[97] Just 19.4% will require a bachelor’s degree or higher. This means that while some Ohioans will be able to advance in the job market by earning a degree, many jobs will not require traditional post-secondary education. Work is needed to improve the quality of the high-school credential jobs we have and can expect to have for the foreseeable future. See Figure 23.
Figure 23
Ohioans represented by a union see pay premium
Education can help individual workers navigate to a higher place within existing power frameworks in the labor market, but increasing union density can change those power structures in ways that lift all workers and enable working people to claim a fair share of the wealth they create. Corporate executives understand this: It’s why they have aggressively sought to gut union density for decades, too often with policymakers’ help. As workers emerge from the traumas of COVID-19, there are signs that employers’ monopoly on power in the labor market is beginning to fracture.
The typical Ohio worker represented by a union was paid $24.13 per hour in 2022, compared with $20.73 for their nonunion counterparts, a wage premium of $3.40 per hour. This figure does not control for factors like educational attainment, meaning that even with a higher concentration of workers in the nonunion workforce holding university and professional degrees, workers still fare better when represented by a union.
In prior years, the premium has been higher; it has declined with lower union density, more non-union workers earning degrees, and likely also reflects increased organizing among low-paid workers including baristas and janitors. Belonging to a union pays, and increasing union density can make the union pay premium even higher.
The union pay premium is larger for women in most years. In 2022, the premium was $4.89 for women and $2.01 for men, one of the larger gaps on record. The higher return on union membership for women likely reflects the fact that union workplaces have more equitable pay structures, whereas employers in non-union shops have an easier time holding pay down for women workers.
Ohioans joined unions, won contracts, and supported labor actions
The share of Ohioans represented by a union has decreased over the last several decades, as corporations strategically dismantled unionized workforces and resisted union drives. Membership as a share of employment had already been declining by the time the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping state data; for the U.S., it was 34.8% in 1954, and almost certainly higher in Ohio.[98] Today, 14.0% of Ohio workers are represented by a union (12.8% are members).[99] Altogether, 699,000 Ohio workers were covered by a union contract in 2022. Ohio ranks thirteenth in the nation in the share of workers represented by a union.
Though many Americans have been pushed out of unions, most of the nation has long been pro-union. Gallup’s latest survey found that 71% of Americans said they approve of labor unions.[100] While this was the highest approval rating since 1965, surveys conducted since 1937 found that most Americans approved of unions every year on record except for 2009. Despite strong majority support for unions, relatively few Ohioans belong to one, even when they want to. But there are signs this could be changing. Ohio workers held 49 union elections in the past year and won 32 (with 10 still pending). These represent 1,826 new union members, triple the number added over the same window last year.[101]
Workers in Ohio and across the U.S. have also been winning strong contract language in negotiation with their employers. One major theme is the move to eliminate two-tier contracts. The United Auto Workers (UAW) are following the Teamsters’ success in eliminating two-tier contracts with the same demand of their own.[102] These contracts typically retain strong wages, pensions and other benefits for long-time workers, but feature far lower job quality provisions for newer workers, even when they perform the same jobs. Two-tier contracts were once rare and typically featured sunset provisions. But decades of corporate consolidation of power forced unions to accept indefinite two-tier contracts in about 20% of union contracts by 2013.[103] That year, the lower tier in many contracts ranged from about $12 to $20 an hour, topping out at the starting wage for the upper tier, that ranged from about $20 to $33 an hour.
The more equitable contracts unions are winning today may reflect in part greater participation of members in the process. Rank-and-file Teamsters served on the bargaining committee for the first time in this year’s negotiation, which won significant wage increases for members, eliminated the lower tier, and averted a strike.[104] The UAW’s core contract demands, once known as the President’s Demands, have previously been delivered to management behind closed doors. This year, UAW President Shawn Fain shared them directly with the members on Facebook Live.
Ohio workers are also demonstrating solidarity with one another across the state. More than 500 Ohioans testified against Senate Bill 83, which would strip away the right of university professors to go on strike.[105] SB83 recalls many of the same provisions as Senate Bill 5, passed in 2011, which barred public employees from going on strike, before being repealed by overwhelming majority in a citizen’s ballot referendum. SAG-AFTRA members with the Ohio-Pittsburgh local held a rally in solidarity with striking Hollywood screenwriters and actors in Parma this summer; those workers are seeking protections that would bar media corporations from using their likenesses to create AI-generated content indefinitely.[106] Two hundred nurses, hospital staff and supporters rallied outside of Cleveland’s Lutheran Hospital in support of a fair contract in August while nurses and other hospital workers stayed on the job.[107]
As working people come together to win better working conditions for all, policymakers should support their efforts. This includes mandating wages that meet the cost of living, and passing policies that make it easier for working people to exercise their voice on the job and in their communities.
Policy choices determine whether Ohio’s labor market succeeds or falls short for working people. Policymakers at all levels of government have the opportunity and the responsibility to use the power of government to support working people and restore balance to labor markets where employers dominate power relationships with the people who work for them.
Policymakers must:
A detailed roadmap to achieve these policy changes is found in A new way forward: 10 ways to support working people and restore prosperity and democracy to Ohio, the policy counterpart to the State of Working Ohio released this past May Day.[111]
In 2023, as working people in Ohio emerge from the trauma and upheaval of COVID-19, many are demanding better of their employers, increasingly joining together with one another to form unions or win better contracts under threat of strike actions. Ohioans are working and leaving jobs for better ones, forcing employers in many sectors to improve wages and conditions.
Employers in response to the tightening labor market are turning to vulnerable workers, including once-incarcerated people and children, and frantically leaning on lawmakers to grant them greater access to vulnerable workers, or to make more workers vulnerable, by gutting unemployment benefits for those already enduring the financial duress of a job loss. Ohio lawmakers should not help them.
For the first time since the Great Recession, a new job market seems possible in Ohio. One in which every person who works for a living is paid a wage that recognizes the value of their work and meets the cost of living; where they are both safe and respected on the job; have the ability to take time off when they need it to care for their loved ones; and have the financial security of a predictable income that covers their families’ needs.
[1] Elise Gould, “The equalizing effect of strong labor markets,” The Economic Policy Institute, July 17, 2023, https://www.epi.org/blog/the-equalizing-effect-of-strong-labor-markets-explaining-the-disproportionate-rise-in-the-black-employment-to-population-ratio/[2] The Economic Policy Institute, “Why the U.S. needs at least a $17 minimum wage,” July 31, 2023, https://www.epi.org/publication/why-17-minimum-wage/
[3] Michael Shields, “A new way forward: 10 ways to support working people and restore prosperity and democracy to Ohio,” Policy Matters Ohio, May 1, 2023, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/a-new-way-forward
[4] Michael Shields, “JobWatch: Ohio has recovered all jobs lost to COVID-19,” Policy Matters Ohio, June 16, 2023, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/job-watch/jobwatch-ohio-has-recovered-all-jobs-lost-to-covid-19. This may change with the annual benchmarking of this data set, shifting the milestone earlier or a little later, depending on the revisions.
[5] See John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, 1936 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/303615
[6] Josh Bivens, “Why is recovery taking so long – and who is to blame?,” The Economic Policy Institute, August 11, 2016, https://www.epi.org/publication/why-is-recovery-taking-so-long-and-who-is-to-blame/
[7] Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics, Ohio jobs peaked at 5,453,100 in March 2006, then did not reach that level again until December 2015 when the state had 5,454,600 jobs.
[8] For more analysis of this history, see Figures 3 and 4 and their accompanying text in State of Working Ohio 2022.
[9] Federal Reserve Economic Data “Resident Population in Ohio,” from U.S. Census Bureau, updated Febrary 9, 2023, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OHPOP
[10] Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, Unemployed persons per job opening ratio, Ohio, https://www.bls.gov/jlt/data.htm
[11] Michael Shields and Bryce Springfield, “Still working for too little in Ohio,” Policy Matters Ohio, July 18, 2023, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/still-working-for-too-little-in-ohio-2023 Dayton regained jobs after that report was released. Table is updated through July 2023 for this report.
[12] Michael Shields, “Manufacturing a high wage Ohio,” The Century Foundation, March 12, 2018, https://tcf.org/content/report/manufacturing-high-wage-ohio/
[13] Albert Lee, “While Surrounding Cities Shrink, Columbus is a Growing Midwest Metropolis,” Midstory, February 1, 2022, https://www.midstory.org/while-surrounding-cities-shrink-columbus-is-a-growing-midwest-metropolis/
[14] Dan O’Brein, “Ohio Just Ordered GM to Repay $28 Million in Tax Breaks for Closing the Lordstown Auto Plant,” ProPublica, September 28, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/article/ohio-just-ordered-gm-to-repay-28-million-in-tax-breaks-for-closing-the-lordstown-auto-plant
[15] Total job separations including quits, layoffs and other causes were 220,000 in May, meaning the total number of Ohioans who began working exceeded the number who left work by about 40,000. See Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics, available at https://www.bls.gov/jlt/data.htm
[16] The workforce participation rate describes the share of working-age Ohioans who are either (a) employed or (b) actively seeking employment.
[17] Katharine Abraham and Lea Rendell, “Where Are the Missing Workers?,” BPEA conference draft, The Brookings Institution, March 17, 2023, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/BPEA_Spring2023_Abraham-Rendell_unembargoed.pdf
[18] Stephanie Ferguson, “Understanding America’s Labor Shortage,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce, July 12, 2023, https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage
[19] Sarah Miller, Merissa Piazza, Ashley Putnam, Kristen Broady, “Worker Voices: shifting perspectives and expectations on employment,” Fed Communities, May 24, 2023, https://fedcommunities.org/research/worker-voices/2023-shifting-perspectives-expectations-employment/
[20] Michael Shields, “JobWatch: The most jobs in Ohio history,” Policy Matters Ohio, August 18, 2023, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/job-watch/the-most-jobs-in-ohio-history
[21] Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, “Employment Situation Indicators for Ohio, July 2023,” https://jfs.ohio.gov/static/ocomm/pdf/Ohio%20US%20EmploymentSituation.pdf?
[22] The employment-to-population ratio shows the number of non-institutionalized civilians over 16 who are employed as a share of that population. (“Prime-age EPOP,” discussed here, narrows the age range to 25-54.) EPOP differs from workforce participation rate in that the latter also includes people who are not employed but are looking for work. See here for more.
[23] For more on how and why, see Petrik, Will. Policy Matters Ohio. “Shaping the future of child care in Ohio,” 2023.
[24] State of Ohio, “Population Projections Report 2023,” https://devresearch.ohio.gov/files/research/P6001.pdf
[25] US Census Bureau Quick Facts for Ohio https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/OH/AGE775222 and the US https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/AGE775222
[26] Throughout this report, the term “Hispanic” is used to maintain consistency with data in or derived from U.S. Census Bureau surveys, which use that term to describe people of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.
[27] The U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, on whose data our research is based, does not report these data across the gender spectrum. Nonbinary people encounter unique intersections of oppression and exclusion that affect their employment, but current census practices do not allow us to examine these factors at scale.
[28] Claire Trageser, “Stop telling women they’re amazing,” Elle, February 24, 2021, https://www.elle.com/life-love/a35562291/stop-telling-women-theyre-amazing/. See also, Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tayagi, The Two Income Trap: Why Middle Class Parents Are Going Broke, Basic Books, 2004, https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/the-two-income-trap-why-middle-class-parents-are-going-broke/
[29] The Economic Policy Institute, “Child care costs in the United States: The cost of childcare in the Ohio,” https://www.epi.org/child-care-costs-in-the-united-states/#/OH accessed August 11, 2023
[30] Amanda Meade, “How will Ohio spend the half a billion dollars of child care ARPA funds not yet authorized?” Groundwork Ohio, December 12, 2022, https://www.groundworkohio.org/post/how-will-ohio-spend-the-half-a-billion-dollars-of-child-care-arpa-funds-not-yet-authorized
[31] A child care desert is a Census tract with at least 50 children under age 5 that has at least three children per child care spot. Some have no available child care at all.
[32] See Center for American Progress’s interactive map on childcare deserts, https://childcaredeserts.org/2018/index.html?state=OH&urbanicity=All accessed August 23, 2023
[33] Rakesh Kochhar, “The enduring grip of the gender pay gap,” The Pew Research Center, March 1 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20women%20ages%2025,in%20at%20least%20four%20decades.
[34] Eileen McClory, “Ohio ordered to pay more to low-income childcare centers,” Dayton Daily News, July 25, 2023, https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/ohio-ordered-to-pay-more-to-low-income-childcare-centers/YQCTCDK3NVGTXDJX5OBH4GPASE/
[35] Will Petrik, “New rule for child care could lower costs for families and stabilize providers,” Policy Matters Ohio, August 24, 2023, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/shared-prosperity-thriving-ohioans/basic-needs-unemployment-insurance/basic-needs/new-rule-for-child-care-could-lower-costs-for-families-and-stabilize-providers
[36] Matthew I. Doran, “Shaping the promised land: the great migration comes to Columbus, Ohio,” Teaching Columbus, https://www.teachingcolumbus.org/the-great-migration-comes-to-columbus.html. Accessed August 5, 2023.
[37] Sarah Miller, Merissa Piazza, Ashley Putnam, Kristen Broady, “Worker Voices: shifting perspectives and expectations on employment,” Fed Communities, May 24, 2023, https://fedcommunities.org/research/worker-voices/2023-shifting-perspectives-expectations-employment/
[38] Migration Policy Institute, “Profile of the Unauthorized Population: Ohio,” https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-population/state/OH accessed August 6, 2023.
[39] The figure is not available for Ohio alone.
[40] Michael Shields, “CEO pay report 2022: Big Ohio CEO’s :396, Typical employee: 1,” Policy Matters Ohio, December 19, 2022, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/ceo-pay-report-2022
[41] Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Living Wage Calculation for Ohio,” https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/39, accessed August 10, 2023
[42] Adewale A. Maye, “Chasing the dream of equity: How policy has shaped racial economic disparities,” The Economic Policy Institute, August 1, 2023, https://www.epi.org/publication/chasing-the-dream-of-equity/
[43] Black Ohioans’ workforce participation rate was 64% by 2022, compared with 61% for white Ohioans. See Figure 8.
[44] Brittney Oliver, “This is what it’s like to search for a job as a Black woman,” Career Contessa, https://www.careercontessa.com/advice/job-search-as-a-black-woman/
[45] Nina Banks, “Black women’s labor Market history reveals deep-seated race and gender discrimination,” Economic Policy Institute, February 19, 2019, https://www.epi.org/blog/black-womens-labor-market-history-reveals-deep-seated-race-and-gender-discrimination/
[46] Adewale A. Maye, “Chasing the dream of equity: How policy has shaped racial economic disparities,” The Economic Policy Institute, August 1, 2023, https://www.epi.org/publication/chasing-the-dream-of-equity/
[47] Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Liveright, 2017, https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/
[48] Larry DeWitt, “The decision to exclude agricultural and domestic workers from the 1935 Social Security Act,” Social Security Bulletin Vol. 40, No. 4, Social Security Administration, 2010, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html#:~:text=Social%20Security%20Act-,The%20Decision%20to%20Exclude%20Agricultural%20and%20Domestic,the%201935%20Social%20Security%20Act&text=The%20Social%20Security%20Act%20of,of%20whom%20were%20African%20Americans.
[49] The Economic Policy Institute, Minimum Wage Tracker, Values updated July 1, 2023, https://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-tracker/#/tip_wage/California
[51] See Figure 4 for the breakdown.
[52] Sarah Miller, Merissa Piazza, Ashley Putnam, Kristen Broady, “Worker Voices: shifting perspectives and expectations on employment,” Fed Communities, May 24, 2023, https://fedcommunities.org/research/worker-voices/2023-shifting-perspectives-expectations-employment/
[53] Federal Reserve Economic Data, “All Employees: Manufacturing in Ohio,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, updated July 21, 2023, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OHMFGN . See also: Dean Baker, “Manufacturing jobs and trade: A tale of two graphs,” Center for Economic Policy Research, August 6, 2023, https://cepr.net/manufacturing-jobs-and-trade-a-tale-of-two-graphs/
[56] The Ohio Workforce Coalition, “When Working Isn’t Enough: Wages and Public Benefits in Ohio,” June 2023, https://www.ohioworkforcecoalition.org/webinars
[57] Black workers represent 12% of the overall workforce.
[58] Nina Banks, “Black women’s labor market history reveals deep-seated race and gender discrimination,” The Economic Policy Institute, February 19, 2019, https://www.epi.org/blog/black-womens-labor-market-history-reveals-deep-seated-race-and-gender-discrimination/
[59] Michael Shields, “JobWatch: Small Ohio job gains in June after recovering pre-COVID job level in May,” Policy Matters Ohio, July 21, 2023, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/job-watch/jobwatch-small-ohio-job-gains-in-june-after-recovering-pre-covid-job-level-in-may
[60] Jessica Poiner, “Some Ohio schools are facing a teacher shortage. What caused it, and how can it be addressed?” Thomas B. Fordham Institute, September 17, 2021, https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/some-ohio-schools-are-facing-teacher-shortage-what-caused-it-and-how-can-it-be
[61] Michelle Croft, Gretchen Guffy and Dan Vitale, “Encouraging more high school students to consider teaching,” ACT Research and Policy, June 2018, https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/pdfs/Encouraging-More-HS-Students-to-Consider-Teaching.pdf
[62] Sylvia Allegretto, “The teacher pay penalty has hit a new high,” The Economic Policy Institute, updated August 26, 2022, https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-penalty-2022/
[63] See Policy Matters forthcoming report on the teacher shortage by Tanisha Pruitt, this fall.
[64] Bureau of Labor Statistics, “All items in U.S. city average, all urban consumers, not seasonally adjusted,” 12-month percent change, available at Current Price Index Databases: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/data.htm
[65] These figures are from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers, a measure by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
[66] Jennifer Nash, “CPI and PCE: Two Measures of Inflation and Fed Policy,” VettaFi Advisor Perspectives, July 31, 2023, https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2023/07/31/cpi-and-pce-two-measures-of-inflation-and-fed-policy
[67] The Federal Reserve uses the core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index maintained by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. It reached 4.1% by June 2023.
[68] New consumer habits and supply chain bottlenecks both caused by COVID-19 unleashed rapid price growth in 2021. It was exacerbated a year later by Russia’s war on Ukraine, which spiked food and energy prices globally as both a direct result of the invasion and due to sanctions. Corporations took advantage of the new pricing power inflation gave them in consumer markets to boost their own profits, and their price-gouging accounted for 54% of the cost of inflation through the fourth quarter of 2021. The makeup of price growth marked a key policy concern, because the Fed’s tools to reduce inflation lack the precision to direct its cost to the corporations that were largely responsible. Had firms not responded to inflation by price gouging – raising their prices far beyond the level needed to simply recover their own increased costs – inflation would have run at half the rates it reached.
[69] Paul Krugman, “A S.A.D. story: What can we learn from the 1970’s?” The New York Times, August 29, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/29/opinion/a-sad-story-what-can-we-learn-from-the-1970s.html
[70] Senate Bill 30, 135th Ohio General Assembly, see business lobby testimony https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/135/sb30/committee
[71] Senate Bill 116, 135th Ohio General Assembly, https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/135/sb116
[72] Crain’s Cleveland Business, “Abortion opponents gain ally in Ohio’s special election: business groups,” August 7, 2023, https://www.crainscleveland.com/government/abortion-foes-business-groups-join-ohio-special-election
[73] Michael Shields and Pam Thurston, “Wasted Assets,” Policy Matters Ohio, December 18, 2018, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/wasted-assets-the-cost-of-excluding-ohioans-with-a-record-from-work
[74] AnnElizabeth Konkel, “Job Ads Noting Fair Chance Hiring Rise in Tight Labor Market,” Austin, TX: Hiring Lab, June 9, 2022. hiringlab.org/2022/06/09/fair-chance-hiring-job-ads-rise/
[75] House Bill 263, 133rd Ohio General Assembly, https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/133/hb263
[76] CIVICC was built and maintained by the Ohio Justice and Policy Center. It is described in a 2018 report that drew on the dataset. See: Michael Shields and Pam Thurston, “Wasted Assets,” Policy Matters Ohio, December 18, 2018, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/wasted-assets-the-cost-of-excluding-ohioans-with-a-record-from-work
[77] American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, “Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers,” June 15, 2022, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/2022-06-15-captivelaborresearchreport.pdf
[78] American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, “Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers,” June 15, 2022, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/2022-06-15-captivelaborresearchreport.pdf. See note 851.
[79]Data from Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. See American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, “Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers,” June 15, 2022, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/2022-06-15-captivelaborresearchreport.pdf note 861.
[80] Colorado Senate Bill 22-050, passed March 30, 2022, https://aboutbtax.com/2lk
[81] The Economic Policy Institute, Minimum Wage Tracker, Colorado $13.65 minimum wage effective January 1, 2023, https://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-tracker/?gad=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw8symBhAqEiwAaTA__H3L8HwLcy4CpDUwgoaejS1W-S7mAAjhxqEjc4Sk33Q6cpgvRVfLKRoC0aoQAvD_BwE#/min_wage/Colorado
[82] Jadenne Radoc Cabahug, “Bill would pay WA’s incarcerated workers minimum wage,” The Seattle Times, February 6, 2023, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/bill-would-pay-was-incarcerated-workers-minimum-wage/
[83] Senate Bill 30, 135th Ohio General Assembly, https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/135/sb30
[84] Senate Concurrent Resolution 2, 135th Ohio General Assembly, https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/135/scr2
[86] Michael Shields, “Ohio needs child labor protections,” Cleveland.com, July 2, 2023, https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2023/07/ohio-needs-child-labor-protections-michael-shields.html
[87] Michael Shields, “Ohio Needs Child Labor Protections,” Cleveland.com, July 2, 2023, https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2023/07/ohio-needs-child-labor-protections-michael-shields.html
[88] Zach Schiller, “Testimony on Senate Bill 116 before the Senate Insurance Committee,” Policy Matters Ohio, June 7, 2023, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/shared-prosperity-thriving-ohioans/basic-needs-unemployment-insurance/unemployment-insurance/testimony-on-senate-bill-116-before-the-senate-insurance-committee
[89] Zach Schiller, “Chamber of Commerce plan would slash Ohio unemployment benefits,” Policy Matters Ohio, March 31, 2021,https://www.policymattersohio.org/blog/2021/03/31/chamber-of-commerce-plan-would-slash-ohio-unemployment-benefits
[90] Michael Shields, “A ray of hope for low-paid workers,” Policy Matters Ohio, October 27, 2022, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/shared-prosperity-thriving-ohioans/basic-needs-unemployment-insurance/unemployment-insurance/a-ray-of-hope-for-low-paid-workers
[91] U.S. Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration, Quarterly UI Data Summary, 2nd Quarter 2023, https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/data_summary/DataSum.asp
[92] Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), covered workers who would have been excluded from their state’s unemployment compensation system for wide-ranging reasons including low pay and status as independent contractors, while Pandemic Unemployment Compensation supplemented unemployed workers’ regular benefit with a $600-per-week payment.
[93] Zach Schiller, “Testimony before the Unemployment Compensation Modernization & Improvement Council, Dec. 1, 2022,” Policy Matters Ohio, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/shared-prosperity-thriving-ohioans/basic-needs-unemployment-insurance/unemployment-insurance/testimony-before-the-unemployment-compensation-modernization-improvement-council-dec-1-2022
[94] Senate Bill 302, 133rd Ohio General Assembly, https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/134/sb302
[95] Crain’s Cleveland Business, “Abortion opponents gain ally in Ohio’s special election: business groups,” August 7, 2023, https://www.crainscleveland.com/government/abortion-foes-business-groups-join-ohio-special-election
[96] Ballotpedia, “Ohio Issue 1, 60% Vote Requirement to Approve Constitutional Amendments Measure (2023),” https://ballotpedia.org/Ohio_Issue_1,_60%25_Vote_Requirement_to_Approve_Constitutional_Amendments_Measure_(2023)
[97] Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, “2030 Ohio job outlook,” see Figure 15, https://ohiolmi.com/_docs/PROJ/Ohio/OhioJobOutlook2020_2030.pdf
[98] Gerald Mayer, Congressional Research Service, “Union membership trends in the United States,” Cornell University ILR School, August 31, 2004, https://bit.ly/3jxB7sI.
[99] Union Affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by state, Bureau of Labor Statistics, updated January 19, 2023 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.t05.htm
[100] Gallup's annual Work and Education survey, collected Aug. 1-23, 2022, https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx
[101] Union Elections Data, https://unionelections.org/data/states/ Data updated August 11, 2023.
[102] Zach Schiller, “Thinking big with the UAW: A conversation with Dave Green,” Policy Matters Ohio, August 15, 2023, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/collective-bargaining/thinking-big-with-the-uaw
[103] Louis Uchitelle, “How Two-Tier Union Contracts Became Labor’s Undoing,” The Nation, February 6, 2013, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-two-tier-union-contracts-became-labors-undoing/
[104] International Brotherhood of Teamsters, “’We’ve Changed the Game’: Teamsters Win Historic UPS Contract,” July 25, 2023, https://teamster.org/2023/07/weve-changed-the-game-teamsters-win-historic-ups-contract/
[105] Morgan Trau, “Ohio labor unions fight back against higher education bill banning strikes,” Ohio Capital Journal, May 31, 2023, https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/05/31/ohio-labor-unions-fight-back-against-higher-education-bill-banning-strikes/
[106] Paul Kiska, “Local union rallies in Parma for Hollywood actors, writers,” Fox 8, August 7, 2023 https://fox8.com/news/local-union-rallies-in-parma-for-hollywood-actors-writers/
[107] Michelle Nicks, “Rally held outside Cleveland Clinic Lutheran Hospital by union workers demanding a fair contract,” 19 News, August 17, 2023, https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/08/17/rally-held-outside-cleveland-clinic-lutheran-hospital-by-union-workers-demanding-fair-contract/
[108] Cornell Law School “ABC Test,” https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/abc_test accessed April 23, 2023
[109] Michael Shields, “JobWatch: Small Ohio job gains in June after recovering pre-COVID job level in May,” Policy Matters Ohio, July 21, 2023, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/job-watch/jobwatch-small-ohio-job-gains-in-june-after-recovering-pre-covid-job-level-in-may
[110] Karen Juanita Carrillo, “Ohio votes under ‘extreme’ gerrymandering that favors Republicans,” The Center for Public Integrity, October 6, 2022, https://publicintegrity.org/politics/elections/who-counts/ohio-votes-under-extreme-gerrymandering-that-favors-republicans/
[111] Michael Shields, “A new way forward: 10 ways to support working people and restore prosperity and democracy to Ohio,” Policy Matters Ohio, May 1, 2023, https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/fair-economy/work-wages/a-new-way-forward
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