Who owns the jobless rate?

COLUMBUS

Gov. John Kasich is concerned about the new unemployment rates that will be reported by the state later this month

And the process of voicing that concern to reporters last week may signal a shift in his rhetoric in advance of the November presidential election, from glowing comments about how his policies are putting Ohioans back to work to critical comments about President Barack Obama and the congressmen and women who can’t figure out a productive way to work together for the good of the national economy.

Ohio has had months of dropping unemployment rates, with 7.4 percent for the month of April, down from 8.8 percent a year earlier and 7.5 percent in March.

After each monthly announcement, some reporter usually asks the governor about the results, and he responds cautiously, saying something about how it’s good news for the state, that it shows his policies are having their desired effect but that there’s still much to do to put Ohioans back to work. Too many residents, he has said repeatedly, still are without jobs and the accompanying hope that comes with a paycheck, so more needs to be done.

Company expansions

Kasich also regularly touts the number of companies that are expanding thanks to JobsOhio, the nonprofit that’s poised to take over duties from the Ohio Department of Development, and the tens of thousands of job postings on the state-affiliated help wanted site (www.ohiomeansjobs.org).

During an appearance in the Columbus area with Mitt Romney, there was an interesting contrast between the economic picture being painted by the GOP presidential hopeful and the governor — the former pointing out the bleak picture facing college graduates due to failing federal policies and the latter urging soon-to-graduate students to consider Ohio and the employment opportunities available.

Back in January, Kasich was asked whether the president should get some credit for the jobs trends.

“I could care less who gets the credit,” he said at the time. “... If a family gets a job, I don’t care who gets credit for it. ... I hope [Obama] gets all the credit and we get everybody back to work.”

But the tenor shift last week, after news that the national unemployment rate for May had risen slightly to 8.2 percent. Total nonfarm payroll employment rose about 69,000.

Kasich said he didn’t have any inside track on information about the coming results for Ohio, but he’s braced for bad news.

‘Dysfunctional’

And he called Obama and Congress — that would include GOP members — “dysfunctional” for not working together to address the issue.

“There’s so much uncertainty,” Kasich told reporters last week. “This national debt is growing, they can’t seem to get anything done whatsoever in Washington, which tells businesspeople look out for a big fat tax increase. They’re talking about raising the taxes on capital gains, and then you have Obamacare.”

He added, “Wouldn’t it be great if the Congress and the president actually got together and sat down and said, you know, we kind of have a crisis here. ... Rome is on fire, and it’s singeing places like Ohio.”

All of this creates a conundrum for the governor: Do you continue to tout business growth and job gains in the state, or do you change the narrative to focus on how anemic the national economy is and how it’s dragging down Ohio.

Or, more simply put, who gets the credit when the ranks of the unemployed shrink, and who gets the blame when those ranks expand?

“We’ve been making great progress, we started to see some progress out of D.C.,” Kasich said. “We’ll go our own way, but the headwinds ... are kicking up again.”

Marc Kovac is The Vindicator’s Statehouse correspondent. Email him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.