Too many Ohioans are still struggling in today’s economy. They work hard, but still have trouble getting by. For many workers, it feels as though the harder and longer they work, the less they have to show for it.

They aren’t imagining things.

Over the past three decades, wages for American workers have stagnated, while the number of hours workers spend on the job has gone up. The middle class has shrunk in every state across the country, including Ohio. A Pew Research Center study shows that the share of adults in middle-income households has fallen from 61 percent in 1970 to 51 percent in 2013—and in Ohio, the share of families in the middle class has dropped below 50 percent.

We need to do more to build on-ramps to the middle class for hardworking Ohioans, and our country took one important step in that direction last week.