MANSFIELD — Controversy surrounding a report about Mansfield job loss published last month has rallied local leaders to find clarity in a glaring, and what some claim inaccurate, statistic.
A story published last month cited the blog 24/7 Wall Street as reporting “the city of Mansfield was the nation’s No. 5 city in job losses over the last year.”
According to the website, jobs in Mansfield declined from 50,576 in October 2015 to 49,399 in October 2016, a 2.33-percent loss.
That figure stunned Mayor Tim Theaker, among others, who immediately questioned the validity of the report.
“I just wondered what businesses in town actually had those jobs leave?” Theaker asked.
Other officials echoed that sentiment to Richland Source. In fact, other entities argue jobs have actually grown in Mansfield.
Team North East Ohio, an economic development organization based out of Cleveland, consults with Richland County Development Group on economic development trends, business retention and attraction and research.
“Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages numbers are reported at the single digit, but are reported seven months behind. The latest available numbers today are for June 2016,” said Sylvio Mecone, director of research at Team NEO. “This data has proven to be much more accurate and reliable, it just has a long lag time.”
According to Mecone, year-over-year from January through June of 2015 and 2016, jobs increased by an average of 0.7 percent.
“The point here is that two verified government sources are showing a much less grim picture, but certainly some job loss could have been possible,” Mecone concluded.
In his 2016 Outlook, Joel Elvery of the External Outreach and Regional Analytics Department at the Federal Reserve Bank noted Richland County is still recovering from losing 15 percent of its employment from March 2006 to March 2010. The closing of Ontario’s GM plant, which started with layoffs of 400 people in 2009 and finished with the closure that in total wiped out 1,200 jobs, played a significant factor in that decrease.
Since then, however, Elvery reported manufacturing has actually grown 250 jobs from June 2014 to June 2015. Also, per capita output and income grew in 2014.
Meanwhile, his data shows the population loss has slowed in recent years. Elvery’s report was filed in January 2015.
Which leads back to Theaker’s original question. In fact, Theaker said he went straight to Richland County Jobs and Family Services to try to verify the 24/7 data.
“The research is missed. And it makes us, the city of Mansfield, look bad,” Theaker said.
The website, 24/7 Wall Street, attributed the numbers to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and ranked five cities in the country, along with Mansfield, as the worst in the nation for job loss. The others were Lafayette, Louisiana; Casper, Wyoming; Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana and Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana.
Karen Seman, Director of Workforce Development at Richland Community Development Group, branded the site as a “blog” and found the numbers suspect.
“How did they come up with the data?” Seman said. “We certainly have some challenges, but again, how did they come up with those numbers?”
Barrett Thomas, Director of Business Retention and Expansion at RCDG, questioned the validity of the blog’s numbers as well.
“It just depends on what those jobs are. If you take OhioHealth, they changed those jobs. Did they count that as job loss? Did they not count for job creation?” Thomas said, referencing a move OhioHealth Mansfield made to restructure 80 positions.
Numbers pulled from Assistant Director of Richland County Jobs and Family Services Lori Bedson and Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Communications Deputy Director Jon Keeling tell a different story, too.
Both cited data that showed a decrease in jobs of 0.9 percent, a far cry from the 2.3 percent job loss reported by 24/7 Wall Street.
The 0.9 percent represents 500 jobs lost from November 2015 to November 2016.
“Unfortunately, reports gather data from the standpoint of a statistical area and not just the city. So the reference to Mansfield is really a reference to the Mansfield Metropolitan Statistical Area,” Bedson said, adding that the Mansfield MSA also includes Richland County and parts of Crestline and Galion.
She also said the data was most likely reported originally via a Local Area Unemployment Statistics survey of household employment. Benson said such data is not a fair representation of job creation and job loss.
“I think they (24/7 Wall Street) took some numbers and made assumptions,” she said.
Keeling said a more accurate report is the Current Employment Statistics survey, also published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mecone agreed, but offered another data set from BLS, QCEW, that narrows down the numbers further, found in the above graph.
“A lot has happened in 10 years,” Richland Area Chamber of Commerce President Jodie Perry said. “And we can’t bury our head in the sand and ignore when bad news comes by any means. But there are lots of lists floating around on the internet.
“They do both, they can make a city look bad and good. It’s just important to remember the big picture. Things are changing, there are lots of good things happening.”
Perry cited a Richland Area Chamber of Commerce annual survey that went out to all 988 of their member organizations at year’s end. She said of the 130 businesses that participated in the survey, 56 percent said they will expand in 2017.
“Thirty-eight percent said they’ll have no changes. Two percent did not respond and three percent said they would decrease jobs,” Perry said. “So the economy is not where we want it to be but we’re on the upswing more than we have been in recent history.”
