An employment assistance firm says its analysis finds Ohio has the second worst job market out of 16 states considered key political battlegrounds.

Challenger, Gray and Christmas assigned the states a score, based on announced job cuts, unemployment in April and the change in employment compared with April of '07.

The Chicago firm says Michigan is the only battleground state with worse job market conditions than Ohio.

Challenger says companies announced plans to cut 48,000 Ohio jobs between June of 2007 and May of this year. The state's unemployment rate for April was 5.6 percent, and about 16,000 fewer people had jobs than a year earlier.