COLUMBUS – Lower wages, fewer jobs, income disparity are all part of Ohio’s economic landscape six years after the end of the Great Recession.
When adjusted for inflation-adjusted, wages in the state dropped 1.1 percent between 1979 and 2014 while the nation’s workforce saw its income double between 1948 and 2014, according to a report “Left Behind: The State of Working Ohio 2015,” a new report released in time for Labor Day by the liberal think tank Policy Matters Ohio.
The report claims that Ohio had 35,400 fewer jobs in June than when the recession officially started in December 2007, while the nation added 2.5 percent to its job base over that period.
“Weak job growth and real wage decline are at the root of Ohio’s deep labor market woes on Labor Day,” said Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio and author of the report.
Ohio had 5.3 million jobs, over 240,000 jobs shy of 2000, the peak job year, she said.
The median wage in Ohio dropped $16.05 an hour in 2014, lower than it was all but eight of the last 36 years, adjusted for inflation. Once more than 8.7 percent above the nation’s median wage, it lagged behind by 5 percent last year, Hanauer said.
There was notable growth in earnings gaps between races and genders, said Hanauer. Men earned $3.30 more per hour than women in 2014 and the median wage for black workers trailed that of whites by 24 percent, compared to only 10 percent in 1979, Hanauer said.
The report said the average income of the top 1 percent of Ohioans was $852,000 in 2012, compared with slightly more than $40,000 for the bottom 99 percent, a gap smaller than that for the nation as a whole.