GREENVILLE—The Darke County Chamber of Commerce held its State of the State Legislative Lunch on Friday afternoon at Romer’s Catering in Greenville.
Lt. Governor Jon Husted spoke at the luncheon on the current state of Ohio’s economy.
“There’s no better place to live than Ohio,” he said. “Ohio is on the rise. It really is. We are creating jobs faster than we can get people to fill them. If you went to OhioMeansJobs.com today, you would see that there are over 200,000 jobs posted. Over 100,000 jobs posted pay $50,000 or more a year.”
Currently, there are about 40,000 people on unemployment in Ohio.
With that fact in mind, Husted assured attendees that for every one person on unemployment in Ohio, the state has two jobs with an annual salary of $50,000 or more available.
In the last four years, 44 companies moved their operations from the coast to nearly every part of Ohio. Husted noted the biggest company out of those is Intel Corporation.
Intel is planning is investing more than $20 billion in the construction of two new leading-edge chip factories in Licking County to meet demands for advanced semiconductors.
Once finished, the 1,000-acre site will house two factories, or fabs, and employ at least 3,000 people.
The only issue, Husted said, is does Ohio have the talent for all of these jobs?
“Where do we find the people?” He asked. “Thats the challenge. That’s what I’ll challenge you to do as a community, as a region. Making sure that you leave nobody behind.”
Husted cited connecting young people with jobs earlier in their careers and offering affordable workforce housing as fundamentals of recruiting and keeping talent.
Following Husted’s remarks, the Chamber’s Legislative Committee awarded its first ever Future Leaders Scholarship to Versailles senior Grant Beasley.
