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Upper Ohio Valley residents know the jobs landscape in our communities is not what it once was. This is a long-term trend, only punctuated by the heavy blows of the COVID-19 pandemic. In many ways, the changes of the past few decades -- let alone the last couple of years -- will mean employment will never again look as it did in, for example, the 1970s.
Employers may be new and different, "work" may not always mean a commute, and the education and training required for those jobs may not be quite what we are used to. But jobs are returning to Ohio, if slowly.
According to Policy Matters Ohio, numbers from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services show the possibility that the number of jobs lost during the pandemic may recover by 2023.
So where are the sectors in which jobs are already fully recovered? Transportation, warehousing and utilities; retail; construction; and, it shouldn't be a surprise, federal government employees are now back at full strength.
But perhaps more importantly, the sectors in which shortfalls have been what Policy Matters Ohio called "persistent" are educational and health services; health care and social services; and local and state government. Ohioans, particularly in our region, cannot ignore that some of those losses are a result of population loss as a whole. We do not need as many teachers if there are fewer children to teach.
We all know Ohio is a good place to live and work. Rather than being content to wait for a sluggish recovery to bring us in a couple of years back to where we once stood, let's start now toward that bright, prosperous future we only need to decide to embrace.