1,400 Layoffs at Ohio Truck Plant Erase a Year of Dayton Job Growth

Nearly 1,400 workers lost their jobs on Wednesday at what had been the Navistar truck factory in southwestern Ohio — a cut large enough to essentially erase an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton area, according to figures cited by the Associated Press.

The layoffs landed three days before President Donald Trump's rally at a nearby high school, part of what he says will be a 32-day campaign sprint to convince voters the economy is stronger than they believe. "All over the country, they're building factories, plants — manufacturing's coming back," Trump said Thursday at a truck plant in Texas. "The only thing we're doing badly at is public relations."

The workers at the Springfield-area plant tell a different story. Polling shows just 17% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the cost of living. For individuals like Kyle Bos, 30, a United Auto Workers member with two daughters and a third due in January, the disconnect is now personal. He held up three tattooed fingers when asked how many times he had voted for Trump. He's done. "Something has to change politically in this country," said Bos, who identifies as a centrist and plans to canvass for Democrats before the November election.

The sector-level story behind the number

The Navistar plant's decline reflects forces that tariffs did not reverse. Trump's broad tariffs failed to boost demand, and the plant's former owner, International Motors, chose to offload the facility. The One Big Beautiful Bill — the president's major legislative achievement — did little for take-home pay here, even with its temporary elimination of taxes on tips and overtime.

"We weren't getting a lot of overtime because of the economy," said Marianne Donnelly, who drove a forklift at the factory. "There just wasn't any to be had, very little to be had." She now buys marked-down meat for her freezer and has canceled newspaper subscriptions and streaming services.

For laid-off workers, the near-term outlook hinges on one company. Roshel, a Canadian manufacturer of armored vehicles that is buying the plant, said in a statement it is "working with everyone involved not only to protect the current workforce, but to more than double it over the coming years through a phased process." Workers say they expect rehiring within six to 12 months — a substantial income gap for a household to bridge.

The regional context

Dayton, a city of 137,000, has shed roughly half of its 90,000 factory jobs since 1990, federal data shows, with losses accelerating after NAFTA shifted work to Mexico and again after China joined the WTO. The recovery that has occurred came largely through Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which now directly employs 38,000 people and has attracted aerospace companies including Joby Aviation, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Electra — whose $850 million investment the White House cites, alongside announcements from Honda and Stellantis, as proof that Trump's policies are creating Ohio jobs.

Jeff Hoagland, CEO of the Dayton Development Coalition, argues the rebound reflects two decades of bipartisan investment. "In economic development, it takes time, and you have got to give it a little bit of time to bake, and then once it does, then you're going to have something special," he said.

What the layoffs mean politically and personally

The election's outcome will be decided in places like Dayton, where Ohio's Senate race — Republican Sen. Jon Husted against former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown — could help determine control of the chamber. Canvassers like JoJo Burkhard, whose boyfriend and mother all lost work in the same layoffs, say inflation has made union households newly persuadable. "It isn't a hard pitch at all," she said.

Morgan Hughes, 35, bought a house at 21 on her Navistar wages and worked alongside her father there. When hours were cut, she moonlighted for DoorDash and earned a real estate license — the kind of portfolio career manufacturing workers increasingly must build.

Roshel's pledge to more than double the workforce will take years to materialize through its phased process, meaning the 1,400 laid-off workers face an uncertain six to 12 months before any potential rehiring begins.