Retreat from high joblessness remains tough job in the Valley

Encouraging economic news on a battery of fronts in recent days gives the appearance that Ohio and the Mahoning Valley may at last be peering at a speck of light at the end of our long dark recessionary tunnel. Consider this double whammy of recent government jobs data for the state and the Valley:

The unemployment rate in Ohio dropped from its 26-year high in March to 10 percent in April. The Wall Street Journal heralded the improvement, noting that Ohio ranked first among the 50 states in total jobs created.

In the Mahoning Valley, the jobless rate fell by more than 2 percentage points over the month, from 14.5 percent in March to 12.4 percent last month, and was also down from the 12.7 percent rate of April 2009.

Of course, numbers tell only part of the full story, and these numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor and the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services in isolation overstate the true strength of our economic recovery.

Other numbers tell different tales. For example, the 4-week average number of Americans seeking unemployment claims this May was 456,500, an increase of 2,250 per week from April. Additionally, 4.61 million remain on jobless assistance, and many of them will lose those benefits Tuesday, now that Congress began its holiday break without acting to extend them.

Clearly then it is important for job-creating players at all levels — local, state and federal governments, regional development organizations and private groups and businesses — not to adopt a sense of full-throttle optimism. Clearly much more work must be done, work that will require just as much energy — if not more — as has been expended to achieve the progress thus far.

To be sure, progress has been made. Beyond the sterile statistical data, real-life scenarios validate a turnaround, particularly in the Mahoning Valley. Thousands of jobs have been created, preserved or resurrected in the Greater Youngstown area, including those at Lordstown General Motors, V&M Star, Exal Corp., VXI call center and Severstal Steel. Officials must step back and analyze the recipes for those success stories to keep them simmering into the long term.

Credit where due

Some credit must go to the emergency stimulus measures of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act adopted in Congress last year. Just as the Works Progress Administration injected a necessary jolt of economic vitality during the heights of the Great Depression, President Obama’s stimulus program has made its mark in increasing employment and strengthening the nation’s infrastructure. The WPA spent billions over four years to bring lasting results. As the current economic fallout ranks as the worst since the 1930s, we cannot expect the stimulus program to make its complete impact in one short year.

And at the risk of overextending our already overextended national debt, we cannot expect the stimulus to do the job alone. More important factors beyond Uncle Sam’s reach must be exploited.

These include strong public and private partnerships complete with competitive tax incentives such as Ohio’s successful Third Frontier program; dogged persistence and hard work by those courting new companies; and, locallly, promotion of the Mahoning Valley’s many high-quality natural and human resources.

Ohio in general and the Mahoning Valley in particular have been stuck in the muck of economic retrenchment and its many related ills far longer than the rest of the nation.

Now that we’ve achieved a modicum of recovery, we must harness the same skills, tools and mindset to expand it. In so doing, those more upbeat jobless-rate figures from last month should begin a long and lasting free fall.