News & Press
Q2 Recap: A New Phase of Execution, Built on a Proven Foundation
I am pleased to provide this recap of JobsOhio's Q2 2025 Public Board of Directors meeting.
This meeting took place inside the brand-new OHLQ distribution center in Groveport, a living symbol of how its public-private partnership model turns every dollar of spirits profits into fuel for JobsOhio’s mission. This fuel has enabled the JobsOhio team working with our partners and with the administration to execute a strategy that's moved Ohio from a bottom 10 state just 15 years ago to a top five state today in many metrics and measures. And it has placed JobsOhio among the top economic development organizations in the country. That story is showcased in the following short video.
A video link to the full Q2 2025 JobsOhio Board Meeting can be found HERE.
JobsOhio 2030: Let’s Grow, Together
After six months of statewide listening sessions, roundtables and strategy summits, we finalized JobsOhio 2030: Let’s Grow, Together, a five-year roadmap guided by a clear North Star: to keep Ohio among America’s top states for high-quality jobs, economic resilience and broad-based prosperity, with benefits that reach every corner of the state. To achieve it, JobsOhio will double down on several key priorities:
- Capitalize on “Super Sectors”
- Continue building on the “Silicon Heartland”
- Seize the emerging and disruptive opportunity of artificial intelligence
- Meet tomorrow’s talent needs head-on
- Amplify innovation throughout Ohio’s Discovery Corridor
All while sharing the authentic brand promise that you really can Have It All In the Heart of It All.
Super Sectors: Capturing Trillion-Dollar Markets
A Super Sector is a dynamic economic cluster where several high-growth industries deliberately converge, leveraging Ohio’s historic strengths and nation-leading workforce into an integrated, supply-chain-ready engine for trillion-dollar markets.
- Semiconductors & Micro-electronics: The world’s chip market is going parabolic, and Ohio has already invested heavily to seize a meaningful slice of it.
- Advanced Air Mobility: Already home to Joby, Anduril, NASA Glenn, and the National AAM Center of Excellence, the world’s best companies are flying in, not over Ohio.
- Life Sciences: Biotech alone is a $1.1 trillion global industry, and our Ohio Discovery Corridor and the Innovation Districts throughout it let researchers, clinicians, and manufacturers collaboratively build the future in real time.
- Energy: The super sector that fuels all the others. JobsOhio is partnering with the Ohio Business Roundtable to analyze Ohio’s current advantages and future needs.
Stack advantages, close the distance between idea and production, and win markets that measure in the trillions. That’s how Ohio positions itself to lead.
Terry Slaybaugh - Sites & Infrastructure
The demand for project-ready sites is high, and the Ohio Site Inventory Program has already turned 109 projects into 18 million ft² of industrial, office and warehouse space and 7,300 acres of site development over the last five years. Backed by funding from the All Ohio Future Fund and new authority to secure strategic sites, Ohio is well-positioned to capitalize on emerging opportunities in advanced air mobility and defense.
Dana Saucier - Energy as a Competitive Advantage
Ohio’s 21st-century energy law cuts transmission, distribution and pipeline taxes up to 90 percent while fast-tracking approvals in designated priority investment areas, keeping power affordable and reliable. Those reforms have already catalyzed more than 3.3 GW of new generation, bringing billions of dollars of new investment to fuel growth across all ten of JobsOhio’s target industries.
The JobsOhio Relocation Incentive (JORI)
Ohio’s economic growth is outrunning the in-state labor pool, especially in the STEM and technical occupations that power our megaprojects and our growth businesses.
JobsOhio has already directed almost $700 million toward talent programs that have directly supported nearly 600 companies, plus helped hundreds more navigate our talent sourcing and placement resources each year. But our work isn’t done, and Ohio’s economic trajectory is on a steep upswing.
Kristi Clouse, Senior Managing Director of Talent at JobsOhio, joined to announce a brand-new tool that will help Ohio employers widen the aperture on their recruiting playbooks.
Beginning this summer, any company operating in one of our priority industries, whether it’s a two-person biotech start-up or a Fortune 100 manufacturer, can receive $15,000 for every out-of-state hire it brings to Ohio and gets successfully settled here.
“JORI lets us reframe national interest into Ohio addresses.”
JORI is designed to do three things at once:
- Attract fresh STEM talent that the state doesn’t already have.
- Discourage in-state poaching by making it just as cost-effective to look beyond our borders as it is to take employees from other businesses down the street.
- Strengthen equity and inclusion by giving companies the flexibility to use the funds however they see fit, whether it's signing bonuses, relocation packages, or out-of-state recruiting campaigns, so long as the result is a net new Ohioan in a priority occupation.
The JobsOhio Relocation Incentive stakes out a clear call to action for the engineers, data scientists, and advanced technicians everywhere, that the fastest path to the future runs through Ohio, and JobsOhio is willing to help them get here.
Investment-ready sites, a modern energy policy, world-class talent, and trillion-dollar super sectors all point to one reality that our governor frequently emphasizes: This is Ohio’s time!
Despite our optimism and big plans ahead, we recognize the weather front we are sailing into is mixed. The headwinds include a sharp drop in national consumer confidence and the impact of new tariffs on supply chains and commodity prices, both of which add layers of uncertainty to corporate planning. The tailwinds from those same tariff policies are accelerating a once-in-a-generation wave of reshoring to the U.S., including Kimberly-Clark’s recent commitment to build a high-tech facility in Warren, Ohio.
So, while confidence metrics flicker and tariff headlines continue to grab attention, the fundamentals of Ohio’s economic resilience and value proposition signal that the macroeconomic trends present much more opportunity than threat for the Buckeye State.
Very respectfully,
J.P. Nauseef
President & Chief Executive Officer
JobsOhio