UNEMPLOYMENT NO LONGER NEWS IN CLEVELAND: In April, the "official" State unemployment rate for Cleveland city residents exceeded 11% for the sixteenth straight month. The rate was over 12% for the thirteenth time since January 2002. About 26,000 adult Clevelanders were "in the labor market" but out of work. (Here's the State of Ohio web query site where I got these figures.)

This was not news. It was not noticed by the PD, the radio and TV stations, Crain's, Scene, or anybody else that I'm aware of. The Mayor did not put out a press release. It was not the subject of a Feagler show or a "Quiet Crisis" forum. Apparently it was not mportant enough to bring to our attention... unlike the search for Laci Peterson, the career prospects of LeBron James, any number of lost animals, the daily fluctuations of the stock market, and local reaction to the Bachelor's choice of a bachelorette.

The Mayor and her former fellow County Commissioners Dimora and McCormack, who used to brag about reducing local welfare rolls by more than 15,000 families (almost all in Cleveland), have not been heard worrying that maybe these folks have now gone from welfare to work to unemployment. Researchers at CWRU's Poverty Center have a recent follow-up report on the County's "welfare leavers" (pdf file, Acrobat needed) that indicates their efforts to find and keep jobs have been pretty grueling. But there hasn't been much "recidivism" (interesting how the term for a return to criminal activity is now applied to asking for public assistance), the caseloads are still at historic lows and "welfare reform" is still successful. So it's yesterday's issue, right?

Of course the most important fact about unemployment in Cleveland is just how controlled we are by national upturns and downturns. When the national economy gets a cold, we get double pneumonia. The jobs that NE Ohio leaders are spending money to attract --service industries, conventions and tourism, advanced manufacturing, even most IT sectors -- are just as sensitive to these national cycles as our old manufacturing base. (One exception might be health care.)

Indeed, the biggest difference between our traditional jobs and the ones we're adding at the low end -- aside from the obvious issue of pay -- may well be the number of Clevelanders who have to work part time, or sporadically, or even as temps, and thus fail to qualify for unemployment benefits... so extending benefits as a response to the current stubborn recession makes little difference to them.

In this situation, which is not going to change any time soon, responsible leaders should be looking at countercyclical options like public service employment. Back when uneducated single mothers were being shoved into Job Clubs and then out the door into $7 "starting jobs", advocates of direct employment were told that the "permanent-growth private sector" would absorb all the willing workers it could get. Now four years later, in an intractable recession, with the Federal and State governments firmly controlled by tax-cut ideologues, we have no welfare system for those mothers and no jobs, either.

It's hard to believe that the Mayor, City Council, the County Commissioners and other county officeholders -- all Democrats -- are ignoring this most basic of historic Democratic concerns. But I guess if those unemployed Clevelanders aren't on TV, they can't really matter all that much. Not like Laci Peterson and the Bachelor.

(Footnote: To their credit, Mayor Campbell and Cleveland City Council recently agreed on a new standard for employment of city residents on City-assisted projects. I personally don't know how real this is, and there's always the suspicion that it's just a step in the slow dance toward a Convention Center ballot issue. But Council President Frank Jackson has a consistent record of taking the jobs-for subsidies approach seriously, so I'm willing to be hopeful.)