Brewed Fresh Daily

A super secret mission is taking me back thru the Cool Cleveland archives where I came across this letter from the senior researcher @ the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland:

"You might be interested in the new figures on the depth of the job loss in metropolitan Cleveland during the recession that we remain in locally. They became available yesterday, and are posted up on the research section of the CEOGC web site. I attach a chart that adds up the bad news. As you see, Cuyahoga County has lost 7.7% of its jobs during the last three years. The raw job loss in Cuyahoga County alone was 62,403. Even the eight county Cleveland-Akron-Lorain-Elyria metro area lost 7% of its jobs, a raw job loss of 79,525. Cleveland's job losses were more rapid than the -4.3% job loss in the entire state of Ohio, which lost 233,448 jobs. Further, Ohio's job loss was more rapid than the -1.5% job loss in the USA as a whole. Thus, it is clear that the recession has been brutal in metropolitan Cleveland. The level of human suffering that has been caused by this massive job loss has been staggering. When we lose 8% of all our jobs, we have a massive disaster on our hands. Further, all that talk that you hear about the national recession being "mild" does not apply to Cleveland or Ohio. The recession has been severe here at the local level, and it continues to be severe right now... It is also interesting to note that although this same information has been in the possession of a very large local newspaper, they have thus far not seen fit to mention it."

That issue was sent out exactly one month ago. I wonder if that "very large local newspaper" has done anything about it yet? On the verge of an election with major economic intiatives [not just Issue 31, but the levy to support the people's universities too (public libraries, silly)], I would hope we be having an intelligent civic conversation [that's right, civic. not just the 200 or so people that talk about it ALL the time] about how to get the local economic sustainable. That's right. I didn't say going or growing. I said sustainable. This isn't some cycle we're going through. This is change. Get used to it.