Something is happening here in west central-Ohio and there aren’t a lot of people talking about it. Step by step, west-central Ohio is leading the way in Ohio’s comeback. It could be thanks to our strong agricultural sector, which was barely hurt by the recent economic downturn, or it could be thanks to the commitment of Honda of America in the region or any number of other reasons. Nonetheless, the economy in this region is ticking at a faster pace than anywhere else in the state, and that is evidenced by our low unemployment rate, which is less than 5% in Mercer County and averages around 5.5% in the rest of the four-county area in my district. However, the unemployment rate is still too high and we need to continue striving to get more people back to work.Our future looks bright—with the visionary development effort JobsOhio leading Ohio’s economic development structure, 538 Ohio companies have grown in the past two years in this state and there have been commitments of 41,292 new private-sector jobs. Here in west-central Ohio the Casad Company recently announced an expansion with nearly 60 new jobs at their printing company. This is a result of JobsOhio organizing development incentives through the local economic development office. We already have talented local resources in our county economic development offices, and JobsOhio is working to coordinate those team efforts across the state.
The expansion of the Casad Company is not the first success of JobsOhio. In fact, since July of 2011 JobsOhio has been able to stop 140, 258 jobs from leaving the state and encouraged new capital investments that total $9.3 billion. As we see more and more examples of the benefits of JobsOhio, it continues to surprise me that some of my colleagues are choosing to work against small business for political gain. At a time when every job created impacts the livelihood of a family and their ability to put food on the table, we all need to support our local small businesses and promote policies that will make Ohio more competitive.