WASHINGTON - The U.S. economy is perking up, but not all states are benefiting equally, and some that aren't could make or break President Bush's drive for re-election next year.

Some 14 states remain in recession, even as the Commerce Department on Tuesday revised its calculation of U.S. economic growth this summer to an unusually strong 8.2 percent annual rate.

Many high-paying manufacturing jobs are gone forever. Workers who go from a $25-an-hour factory job to a $7-an-hour retail job may not be satisfied voters.

Sung Won Sohn chief economist at Wells Fargo bank

Some of those 14 states are electoral battlegrounds in the industrial Midwest that could decide the outcome of next year's presidential election. While a national economic recovery almost surely would help Bush, that may not be enough unless the recovery is strong enough to create jobs in those states, political analysts say.

"Overall, the jobs issue is a potent one here," said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron in Ohio, a state Bush won relatively easily in 2000. "If the election were held today, Bush would have to fight hard to hold Ohio."

Ohio lost 13,700 jobs in October, one of 15 states with declines even as jobs nationwide grew by 126,000, according to the U.S. Labor Department. The figures are adjusted to smooth out seasonal variations in the labor market.

Other losers among political battleground states included Pennsylvania, which shed 3,900 jobs last month, and Missouri, which dropped 3,300 jobs.

Many of the lost jobs are in factories; that could help Democrats energize their traditional union base and get more voters to the polls, Green said.

Bush isn't facing uniformly bleak economic conditions in all the battleground states. Florida, the hotly contested state that determined the 2000 election, has one of the strongest economies in the country. The Sunshine State has added 178,000 jobs since Bush took office.

And with the election nearly a year off, there's still time for the jobs situation to improve elsewhere.

There are already early signs of improvement in Kansas City, Mo., and in Midwest cities that aren't as dependent as others on the auto industry, said Steve Cochrane, the director of regional economics at Economy.com, a West Chester, Pa., analysis firm.

He cited Fort Wayne, Ind., and Dayton, Ohio, as cities where the economy has stabilized and might turn up.

"For parts of the Midwest, the worst is behind it," he said. But, he added, "If you look at Detroit, Toledo and Cleveland, they don't look so good."

As of October, only 14 states remained in recession, according to Cochrane's monthly analysis of employment and industrial-production data. That was down from 25 in the summer.

The 15 states that lost jobs in October also were fewer than the 26 states that shed them the previous month. Two hard-hit industrial battleground states added jobs in October: Wisconsin was up 9,000 jobs and Michigan 2,900.

The modest gain in Michigan, which Democrat Al Gore won in 2000, is a small fraction of the 185,000 jobs that have been lost there since Bush took office in January 2001, a point that his Democratic opponent no doubt will stress.

The unemployment rate in Michigan remains 7.6 percent, tied with Oregon for the highest in the nation. The national average is 6 percent.

"It's hard to be appreciative of the stories about the great economic recovery in the country when there's absolutely no evidence of it in your own back yard," said Bill Ballenger, the editor of the newsletter "Inside Michigan Politics" in Lansing, the state capital.

The political question is whether or not the recent job gains accelerate in the 11 months before Election Day.

"It's finally moving in the right direction, but at a snail's pace," said David Littmann, the chief economist at Comerica Bank in Detroit.

Littmann forecasts a pickup in Michigan's job growth next spring and summer, but, he said, "I don't know if it will be enough to turn around Michigan's voting pattern."

Bush leads in polls in Michigan, though Ballenger attributes that to the failure of a clear favorite to emerge from the Democratic field.

Another factor in industrial states will be the types of jobs created, predicted Sung Won Sohn, the Minneapolis-based chief economist at Wells Fargo bank.

Many high-paying manufacturing jobs are gone forever. Workers who go from a $25-an-hour factory job to a $7-an-hour retail job may not be satisfied voters, Sohn said.

The Labor Department's regional and state employment report is on the Web at www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.toc.htm

Copyright 2003 Knight-Ridder

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