Link: Best Cities For Jobs - Forbes.com.
According to the rankings released by Forbes.com, no Ohio city/region broke into the top half of the 100 Best Cities for Jobs. Four Ohio cities fell into the "90's."
One of the key factors in the calculations - job growth - also left Ohio in the dust, with one exception. Akron 33 in this area (overall rank 61), while the remaining Ohio cities fell into the bottom half. Here's an extract of the charts for Ohio cities and 2 of the 8 ranking categories for 100 American cities:
| City | Overall rank |
Improved | Job growth rank |
| Akron | 61 | * | 33 |
| Cincinnati (region) | 56 | * | 53 |
| Cleveland (region) | 92 | * | 91 |
| Columbus | 65 | 70 | |
| Dayton | 95 | 97 | |
| Toledo | 96 | * | 86 |
| Youngstown | 98 | 87 |
What does this mean for Ohio employers and workforce? It may mean that the focus of the last 10 years or so - whatever that focus might be - has been mis-directed. Certainly a number of other cities who ranked relatively high, have faced considerable challenges in the changing economic flow. Among these are Oklahoma City (21), Camden NJ (26), Poughkeepsie NY (27), Knoxville TN (37), Edison NJ (40) and Baton Rouge LA (43).
At his first inauguration - the height of the Great Depression - Franklin Roosevelt said: "Do something. If it works, do it again. If it doesn't, do something else."
No one can deny that our government infra-structure, our chambers and business groups, our schools - have all been doing something. But the results - this Forbes.com survey being only the most recent - indicate a general back-sliding, and little progress toward higher productivity and a healthier economy. The traditional business complaints about taxes can't play a significant role if you don't have a business capable of making money on a sustained basis. Traditional labor complaints about benefits and health costs have no grounding if there is no job to support them. The education system - from the bottom to the top - talks about reform, complains about funding, but the results show little apparent improvement in graduation rates, literacy, job fitness, etc.
The problems are systemic, and the solutions must be conceived and attained with a collaborative - not an adversarial - approach, across community special interests. This is not a zero sum game - unless everyone keeps fighting each other, continues to cling to old patterns of thought and behavior - in which case everyone gets zero.
It appears to be time for new ideas. It may be time to do "something else."
(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

