Signs of recovery, but ...

Signs of recovery, but ...

Dayton Daily News: From the beginning of the current recovery from The Great Recession, the main problem has been jobs. Corporate profits have been excellent. Overall growth of the economy — the worth of it — has been good. Government revenues have started to pick up.

But for a long time, few new jobs were being added. Even now, the unemployment rate, while down substantially from its high point, is in a territory that historically would have been considered bad: 8.8 percent nationally and 8.9 percent in Ohio.

New figures suggest that people are hardly being picky about the jobs they’ll take. Dayton Daily News Staff Writer Randy Tucker reported recently that the number of Ohioans earning $7.25 an hour or less has more than doubled since the beginning of the recession. From 77,000, it is most recently reported at 172,000.

News like that puts a damper on the news that Ohio has actually been adding more jobs recently than other states.

As the recovery proceeds, it’s important for government leaders to keep an eye on how it is playing out. People who lost jobs during the recession that were appropriate for their education levels are, after being unemployed for a long time, taking lesser jobs. This happens even as Ohio as a state is struggling to ensure that more people get college educations.

That is an appropriate thrust, of course, because, among other reasons, the educated are often the ones who produce jobs.

Meanwhile, though, a lot of people are going backward in life. That’s a central problem not only of the recovery period, but of our time.