OHIO’S 1ST DISTRICT: THE COMEBACK AT A GLANCE

• Cincinnati metro unemployment hit 3.5% in June 2026, down from 4.4% a year earlier.
• That is the second-lowest rate among Ohio metros reporting June data, behind Columbus only.
• Ohio's economy crossed a $1 trillion annual rate, in current dollars, for the first time in the first quarter of 2026.
• GE Aerospace is directing more than $115 million into Cincinnati-region operations in 2026.
• The roughly $4 billion Brent Spence Bridge Corridor rebuild broke ground May 8, 2026.

GE Aerospace is headquartered in Evendale, inside the district; the regional total also covers company sites in West Chester and Peebles, outside the district. Its Ohio total tops $160 million and it plans 5,000 U.S. hires in 2026. More than $1 billion in freight moves through the Brent Spence corridor every day. Labor market data as of June 2026.

• Utica Shale horizontal wells produced more than 48 million barrels of oil in 2025.
• Up 39% from 34.5 million barrels in 2024 and nearly triple 2021 output.
• January 2026 agreements cover 2,176 MW at two northern Ohio nuclear plants, which today support more than 1,200 jobs.
• Southern Ohio's Portsmouth site: a planned 10 gigawatts of new generation, expected to support more than 10,000 construction jobs.
• Duke Energy Ohio/Kentucky served about 880,000 electric customers as of 2022.

The Utica's horizontal wells sit in Ohio's Appalachian counties, well east of this district; natural gas production held just over 2 trillion cubic feet. Duke Energy Ohio, headquartered in Cincinnati, delivers electricity and natural gas across the district; Duke Energy Ohio/Kentucky also served about 550,000 natural gas customers as of 2022, and $1.4 billion was invested across southwest Ohio over the preceding decade.

• More than 165,000 Ohio students use state-funded scholarships to attend private schools.
• EdChoice Expansion is open statewide, outside the separate Cleveland Scholarship program, with no cap; 100,922 students participated in 2024–25.
• In the first year every Ohio family became scholarship-eligible, a Cincinnati-suburb district topped the State with more than 2,000 EdChoice Expansion participants.
• Ohio opted in to a new federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for donations to scholarship-granting organizations, from 2027.

Full EdChoice Expansion awards are $6,166 (K–8) or $8,408 (grades 9–12) below 450% of the federal poverty level. Ohio also has 339 public charter (community) schools serving almost 120,000 students, nearly 180,000 private-school students, and more than 60,000 homeschoolers; 88% of Ohio students graduate in four years, and the same analysis flags declining reading scores.

• Hamilton County overdose deaths fell 30% in 2025, to 194 from 277 in 2024.
• That is a fourth consecutive annual decline and the lowest county total since 2012.
• Cincinnati reported 23,424 crimes in 2025, down from 24,349; homicides 61 versus 65.
• Southwest border apprehensions totaled 237,538 in FY2025, the lowest level since 1970.

The county decline began in 2022, and county officials credit years of local prevention, treatment, and quick-response work; the 2025 total is about a third of the county's 2017 peak of 570. Provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, as reported by Axios, show Ohio overdose deaths fell roughly 35% in 2024. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports 14 consecutive months of zero releases at the border. A March 2026 federal grand jury in the Southern District of Ohio charged six Chinese nationals and two Chinese pharmaceutical companies over fentanyl precursors and cutting agents; an indictment contains allegations only and the defendants are presumed innocent.