www.toddwolfrum.com<\/a>.) The crux of that book was that the Boomers were the first generation in history not to sufficiently replace themselves with children and there approaches a massive workforce shortage as that generation reaches retirement.<\/p>\nOur county demographics are ahead of Lautman\u2019s thesis. The kids had already been leaving here for a few decades. Now, as the Boomer generation begins to retire, there is not only no one to replace them from the Millennials now entering the workforce, but, because of the population loss in our county over the last twenty years, there is also a shortage between the retirees and the beginners.<\/p>\n
And because we lack people of working age, we also lack sufficient numbers of kids in the county that are going to be reaching working age over the next 10-15 years who are likely to stay here and be productive.<\/p>\n
The problem is unique in history. You might see our unemployment rate in the paper. I\u2019m here to tell you that those numbers mean absolutely nothing. Most of our county employers have job openings, some have high-paying job openings. The trouble is finding someone willing to get an education or just a warm body that can pass a drug test and show up for work. If there are open jobs not being filled, the actual unemployment rate is zero.<\/p>\n
At zero unemployment, the problem is not attracting business, the problem is keeping the ones you\u2019ve got. How long can a company last if it can\u2019t find employees? What company is going to locate here if the businesses that are already here can\u2019t find workers? Funny thing about successful businessmen — they\u2019re not stupid.<\/p>\n
This all makes the adage \u201cIf you build it they will come\u201d obsolete. Not to say that someone filling the Megasite would not help. If a large employer paying premium wages filled that 1,600 acres north of town, we can work with that upside. But if it happened tomorrow, it is difficult to see how our existing businesses would survive. Premium wages would effectively draw away all the good employees from our existings who are already short workers. How long could they last?<\/p>\n
Further, the Boomers retiring is a regional problem — \u00a0we\u2019re not going to be able to draw very much from our neighbors\u2019 populations. Our former state representative, Jim Hoops, was recently up to our office. He now works for Northwest State in Archbold and I asked him if the workforce problem is, indeed, national as Lautman suggests. He affirmed for northwest Ohio and said that both Sauder’s and Campbell Soup, two big employers in that region, are having trouble finding employees.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve heard it said that, whatever else we do, we need to keep a strong connection with Columbus because that\u2019s who\u2019s going to help us land the big fish in the end. Here\u2019s what Columbus is preaching: That a worker will drive 45 miles for a good job so anything that happens within 45 miles of Van Wert is good for Van Wert.<\/p>\n
Read that carefully with the understanding that Columbus is also encouraging regionalization and has only been successful in attracting business to Ohio\u2019s largest metro areas or near them — the places where all of our kids are moving. Sure, they would love to help the small towns, but they know they can\u2019t because of the demographics and workforce shortage.<\/p>\n
The best Columbus can do is try to convince us that a win for Findlay is a win for us. But follow that line of thought to an obvious conclusion: Will the next generation stay here and drive that 45 miles too? Not a chance in hell. A win for Findlay is a win for Findlay. For us, it\u2019s just buying time as our population continues a downward spiral.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not all gloom and doom. The local economic development strife over the last few years that brought this issue to the forefront actually puts us ahead. Other communities have the same status quo issues as here — successful people who want to do things an old way because it worked for them. But times have changed. We had that fight already — everyone else will have it a few years from now when someone notices they also don\u2019t have enough young people anymore.<\/p>\n
We might have a deeper hole to dig out of, but we also have a blank slate. If you\u2019re looking for someone to come and save our community, brother, that just isn\u2019t going to happen. We are on our own and so is every other rural community. But, to paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, sometimes nothin\u2019 can be a real cool hand. Over the next few weeks, I\u2019ll tell you how. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first step is admitting that you have a problem. Then you have to figure out what the problem is. Economic conditions here are not good, but most of you already know that. According to the 2010 census, Van Wert County had the lowest per capita income of any county in northwest Ohio except Hardin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 14:13:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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