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Look no further than the boundary between Marion and Delaware counties to see where the Ohio and U.S. economies stand nine years after the end of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
On one side is one of the most prosperous counties in America, fueled by a growing cluster of well-educated workers. Income per person in Delaware County is about 50 percent higher than the statewide average.
On the other is a county like many in Ohio and the U.S., one that has been eroding for decades because of factory closings, stagnant incomes, a declining population and, more recently, the opioid crisis. The average income per person in Marion County is half of that in Delaware County.
"The economy is working remarkably well for well-educated people and where they cluster," said John Lettieri, president and CEO of the Economic Innovation Group, a public-policy organization in Washington, D.C., that has tracked changes in the well-being of communities in the U.S. over the past decade.
But it's a different story elsewhere.
"The rest of the country looks so dramatically different, you wouldn't even call it a recovery," Lettieri said.
Even business boosters in Marion County acknowledge the depth of the troubles. "Did you know that Marion County has a larger percentage of abandoned properties than Cleveland, Ohio?" a Marion Area Chamber of Commerce newsletter said in July.
Since the end of the Great Recession, the most significant job gains nationwide have been clustered around the most prosperous areas of the country, while many metro areas and midsize cities continue to lag, according to various studies. Many of those areas have yet to recover from not only the last recession, which ended in 2009, but also the one before that, in 2001.
More jobs and businesses have been created in the most prosperous 20 percent of the ZIP codes in the U.S. than the bottom 80 percent combined, according to the Economic Innovation Group.
Midsize cities throughout Ohio -- places such as Canton, Chillicothe, Mansfield, Marion and Newark -- have taken repeated blows. Many of these cities were built around and depend on one or two industries that have collapsed or pulled back, taking with them a significant number of middle-class jobs and the community leaders who served on school boards or were leaders in local charities.
Sixty-eight of Ohio's 88 counties, including five of the six biggest, saw their income per person decline compared with the nation from 1970 to 2015, according to a report released in March by the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University.
"I want to be clear: Our people are suffering," Mark Johnson of Chillicothe, business manager for the Tri-State Building Trades Union, said at a public hearing on a proposal to build solar farms in Highland County in southern Ohio. "It's a forgotten land."
The loss of factory jobs takes much of the blame for the state's woes.
Ohio lost about 400,000 factory jobs -- about 40 percent of its manufacturing employment -- between 2000 and 2010 and has recovered only about 90,000 of those jobs since, state employment records show.
Trumbull County once had 49 percent of its total employment in manufacturing. Then it lost 30,000 of its 43,000 manufacturing jobs, and more cuts are on the way: General Motors said last month it will close its plant in Lordstown, eliminating 1,600 jobs.
Montgomery County, which includes Dayton, once had a thriving middle class. But a series of factory and headquarters closings from 1970 to 2015 cost the region 65,000 of its 91,000 manufacturing jobs, the report said.
Richland County lost 10,000 jobs from a string of plant closings: Mansfield Tire and Rubber in 1978, Westinghouse Appliances in 1990, Tappan appliances in 1992 and the General Motors stamping plant in 2010.
In Marion County, Marion Power Shovel, which produced the steam shovels used to build the Panama Canal and once employed 3,200 workers, closed in 1978. Armco steel closed its plant there in 1981, Quaker Oats pet food did likewise in 1989 and Con Agra popcorn in 2014.
The Marion County Historical Society proudly lists the companies that helped build and shape the city. "Marion is representative of small-town America that helped make the United States what it is today. Farming, quarrying, manufacturing, small businesses, local plants of worldwide industries such as Whirlpool Corporation, Huber, Eaton, Quaker Oats and other educational resources such as the Ohio State University-Marion all played a part in the growth of America."
"From Marion Power Shovel to Quaker Oats, you could walk down the street and get a job," said Gus Comstock, the director of Marion CAN DO!, an economic-development group.
Today, the county trails neighboring Delaware County in a host of categories -- business and job creation, education levels of the people who live there and home occupancy. The Marion County poverty rate is 17.4 percent, according to the Economic Innovation Group study.
"Marion is at the geographic center of the Rust Belt," said Brian Haviland, president and CEO of the Columbus public relations firm FrazierHeiby and a Marion native who took on a branding campaign for the community. "I don't know that any community was as hard-hit as Marion."
By contrast, the poverty rate in Delaware County is 4.9 percent, the lowest in the state, and the county is among the best when it comes to business starts. Income per person averaged $71,325 last year, compared with $36,328 in Marion County.
"It's the cycle of human capital driving business formation," Lettieri said. "Business formation drives job formation."
Delaware County benefits from being a part of the Columbus metro area, an economic standout in the Midwest since the recession ended.
Mark Williams and Mark Ferenchik are writers for The Columbus Dispatch. This story was generated as part of Your Voice Ohio, a collaboration of Ohio media outlets exploring the state's economy.
mawilliams@dispatch.com
mferenchik@dispatch.com