The just released 2nd quarter 2009 edition of the Ohio Economic Trends features an overview of the government sector in Ohio and its six largest metropolitan areas. Over the past ten years, from 1998 to 2008, overall employment in Ohio contracted while government employment expanded. The government job growth was largely due to an expansion in local government employment while state job growth was slight and federal employment contracted. The past two years, however, have been a different story. While overall employment fell 0.6%, government employment also fell, albeit at a slower 0.2% pace.

In Ohio’s economy overall, employment plummeted 4.9% in Ohio over the year ending April 2009 with over 100,000 jobs lost in manufacturing. Also in April, a new low was posted in single-family building permits and a new high in initial unemployment claims. Employment in high-tech industry, however, continued to expand through the end of 2008. From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008, total wages in the state were flat, but wages in the high-tech industry grew 2.7%.