Friday, September 16, 2011

PERRY and Texas Jobs

Big H/T to Emily Holden for her spot- on comments on Perry's job creation plaudits in Texas:

" Despite Perry’s job-creation talk, Texas poverty rates high — and going higher

Source: US Census Bureau data

Rick Perry has touted his job-creation record as Texas governor as one of the biggest strengths he could bring to the White House, and he’s already come under fire for repeatedly taking credit for the 40 percent of the nation’s jobs created in his state since June, 2009.
That number is true but part of a trend that began 30 years before Perry took office, and it doesn’t mention that job gains haven’t kept up with Texas’ rising population, according to FactCheck.org.

New data released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau shows Perry’s favorite figure might also be painting an incomplete picture of the overall state of Texas’ workforce.

A report from the Austin-based nonprofit Center for Public Policy Priorities said that despite the additional jobs created in recent years, Texas’ poverty rate is higher than the rest of the country’s — and growing faster than the national rate. The poverty rate in Texas jumped to 18.4 percent in 2010 from 17.3 percent in 2009, compared to national rates of 15.1 percent in 2010 and 14.3 percent in 2009. The statistics mean that in 2010, 4.6 million Texans were living in poverty–earning $22,113 a year or less for a family of four.

The hungry and homeless gathered around the SoupMobile in Dallas
Texas also tied with Mississippi for having the highest proportion of low-wage workers in the country–nearly 10 percent of all hourly employees, according to the report."
Does the fact that fully 20 % of ALL TEXANS live in poverty ring any bells ? If the nation wants a President who is familiar with increasing poverty to help us out of the depression, Rick's the guy. Couple of additional statistics I picked up from the BLS:

In the 4 year period of Mitt Romney's Governorship, Massachusetts had consistently HIGHER EMPLOYMENT than the national average. Unemployment remained below the national average from 2002 - 2006.

In contrast, during the ten years from 2000 to 2010 , Texas unemployment was higher than the national average in 7 of the years and was 10 % ABOVE Massachusetts on average for the two comparative time frames.

Finally, the jobs added during Romney's tenure of relatively High employment also had far higher pay rates than Texas, as Holden's above critique point out.

So, stop with the Perry job machine talk , unless you are part of the Toomey- Perry businessman's alliance that financially benefit from opening Texas' doors to as many low wage jobs as possible.
There is a political train wreck here, folks. Believe me, if we nominate Perry, we are going to be one sad lot of folks on election night

CraigS


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