Agenda 360 shares its plans for local job growth

By David Holthaus
dholthaus@enquirer.com

The goal would be ambitious even in the best of economic times. In the worst of times, it appears virtually insurmountable: Create 200,000 jobs in little more than a decade.

Yet that's what local business and community leaders say they're committed to accomplishing. The goal isn't just aggressive, they say, it's essential to transforming the region into one of the nation's leading metropolitan areas.

The job-growth objective is a cornerstone of the Agenda 360 communitywide plan for growth. Unveiled in February, Agenda 360 was the product of two years of community meetings led by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber. From more than two dozen meetings involving 1,500 people, organizers identified goals to guide their efforts and those of other organizations around the region through 2020. To measure progress, three simple but lofty goals were laid out, the most audacious being the plan to create 200,000 jobs by 2020.

"We wanted to aspire to not just an incremental increase, but to a quantum increase," said Myrita Craig, executive director of Agenda 360. "Love it or hate it, that's what it is."

Achieving the goal would transform the workforce in Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky and Southeastern Indiana. The addition of 200,000 net jobs in little more than a decade would require a rapid acceleration of the historical rate at which jobs have been created here. In the decade from 1998 to 2008, before the recession hit with full force, 64,000 jobs were added in the 15-county metropolitan area, according to government figures. More here.