COLUMBUS – Ohio’s recovery from the recession has not been a boon to all of the state’s workers, many of whom have seen poverty creep up on them over the years.
According to a report by the progressive-leaning Policy Matters Ohio, six of the state’s 10 most common jobs paid less than the $26,000 a year a typical worker would need to avoid needing food assistance to feed a family of three.
“Examining statewide numbers, Ohio may look better off than it really is,” researcher Hannah Halbert said.
She criticizes policies that grant tax breaks to wealthier Ohioans while failing to help middle-class families and she calls for more funding for mass transit and childcare, services which would help working families.
While the state has recovered all the jobs lost during the recession, Halbert says that, since 2007, 215,000 fewer Ohioans are participating in the workforce.
Even in the Columbus area, the state’s economic locomotive, six of the area’s 10 most common jobs pay the typical worker too little to feed a family of three without food assistance (see table) and many of those workers are earning less as a share of poverty than they did in 2000, the report claimed, citing U.S. Department of Labor statistics.
In 2000, four of the 10 most common occupations in the Columbus area paid so little that a family of three was left dependent on food assistance to get by; today that number has grown to six, Halbert and fellow researcher Isaac Miller write in their report, released on May 1, International Workers Day.
Columbus on average had 1.08 million jobs last year, 123,100 more than in 2007, and 1.10 million in March, when the region’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, according to the state.
But only three of the most common jobs in Columbus – laborers and freight workers, restaurant servers, and office clerks – saw their real earnings increase from 2000 to 2017.
Among the top 10 occupations in central Ohio, registered nurses are paid the most, at over $60,000 a year, while food prep workers struggle with annual wages that are less than the federal poverty rate.
The Labor Department’s poverty threshold for a family of three has gone from $14,150 in 2000 to $20,420 in 2017.