Kasich sounds warning note over economy

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Ohio Gov. John Kasich warned Fri­day that Ohio’s econ­omy is not as strong as he would like and he’s see­ing signs of a pos­si­ble slowdown.

Kasich said he’s con­cerned that busi­nesses are in a hold­ing pat­tern until after the elec­tion and that the state won’t con­tinue to see gains. He said too many peo­ple are still out of work to cel­e­brate the state’s 7.2 per­cent unem­ploy­ment rate, unchanged for the past three months but still well below the national rate of 8.1 percent.

“As I look at the veloc­ity of the jobs, we’re start­ing to see signs that are not good,” Kasich told The Asso­ci­ated Press on Fri­day. He added: “I want the peo­ple of my state to know that I just have deep con­cerns going for­ward about where we are and where we could end up.”

He said the pipeline of pos­si­ble jobs com­ing to Ohio isn’t as strong as it was a year ago. He cited an over­seas com­pany plan­ning on bring­ing 800 jobs to the state, yet a final deci­sion con­tin­ues to be put off.

Kasich, a Repub­li­can and Mitt Rom­ney sup­porter, said he was not wad­ing into the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign with his com­ments. He said he believes Ohio would do bet­ter under Rom­ney, and he crit­i­cized what he called the “head­winds” of uncer­tainty over debt, taxes and regulations.

“But I also believe that if it doesn’t go that way we can’t be par­a­lyzed, we just can’t rub our hands and cry in our beer,” Kasich said.

Kasich made his com­ments return­ing from Cam­bridge where glass insu­lat­ing com­pany Quanex announced it was adding 162 jobs to its exist­ing 170 employ­ees. The state pro­vided incen­tives to the com­pany includ­ing tax cred­its, Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said.

The state Depart­ment of Job and Fam­ily Ser­vices said Fri­day that sea­son­ally adjusted job­less­ness in Ohio was again 7.2 per­cent in August, stay­ing at its low­est level since Sep­tem­ber 2008. The state’s non-farm pay­rolls dropped by 2,000 com­pared with July’s figures.

Ohio’s rate has remained about 1 point below national unem­ploy­ment rate, which dropped from 8.3 per­cent in July to 8.1 per­cent in August.

The num­ber of unem­ployed Ohio work­ers dropped by about 5,000, from 418,000 in July to 413,000 last month.

Kasich noted the state has 123,000 more jobs than Jan­u­ary 2011, when he took office. But he also ques­tioned the strength of the auto recov­ery in the state, say­ing the state has 500 fewer over­all auto assem­bly and parts jobs over the same period. There has been good auto­mo­tive news recently, he said, but the industry’s over­all foot­print is smaller.

As he’s said pre­vi­ously, the state must resist calls to spend down its $500 mil­lion sur­plus or increase spending.

“We were in the ditch, the ambu­lance picked us up, now we are in the hos­pi­tal and we’re being rehabbed,” Kasich said. “It’s not like we’re healed. We’ve got a lot peo­ple still in poverty, a lot of peo­ple unem­ployed, and the notion that we now can kind of relax is false.”

Kasich struck a sim­i­lar tone at the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion, pro­mot­ing the state’s recov­ery as a model while say­ing Obama admin­is­tra­tion poli­cies were hold­ing Ohio back.

Posted by AP News on Sep 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.