There is a very interesting blog post at Political Math (via Instapundit) explaining why the attacks on Rick Perry based on Texas’ job growth will fail.
The attack on Perry, which the Axelrod/Plouffe message machine is pushing, is that Texas still has unemployment near the national average, any job growth is the result of lucky circumstances and the energy sector, and the jobs are low wage. The author, who says he is not a Rick Perry fan, debunks those arguments with data.
Short version, Texas is absorbing huge numbers of workers from other states which keeps both the unemployment rate (lower than the national average, but still above 8.0%) and median wage (28th out of 50) in the middle of the pack. Using a variety of measurements, the author concludes that Texas job growth under Perry has been impressive, even when the energy sector is excluded.
One can argue that Perry had very little to do with the job situation in Texas, but such a person should be probably prepare themselves for the consequences of that line of reasoning. If Rick Perry had nothing to do with creating jobs in Texas, than why does Obama have something to do with creating jobs anywhere? And why would someone advocate any sort of “job creating” policies if policies don’t seem to matter in when it comes to the decade long governor of Texas? In short, it seems to me that this line of reasoning, in addition to sounding desperate and partisan, hogties its adherents into a position where they are simultaneously saying that government doesn’t create jobs while arguing for a set of policies where government will create jobs.Or, to an uncharitable eye, it seem they are saying “Policies create jobs when they are policies I like. They don’t create jobs when they are policies I dislike.”
The one metric I didn’t see in the post is what the U.S. unemployment rate would look like if Texas did not grow jobs and absorb workers from other states. That would be interesting.
The case for Rick Perry in the current environment seems to be growing. Just like the jobs in Texas.
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