Full disclosure: I don’t like Rick Perry for our next president. I have my reasons that aren’t worth going into here. However, when I was watching the GOP debate and pro-Perry people started bringing up Rick Perry’s job numbers as a cudgel against other candidates, I looked into the BLS data on Texas jobs. Having familiarized myself with the data, I started noticing claims on the Texas jobs data that started popping up that directly contradicted what I was seeing in the data. So I wanted to clear up a couple of these common misconceptions.
Note: If you are going to comment and you want to introduce some new objection to the Texas job numbers, you MUST provide original data. I spent about 4 hours digging through raw data to write this post. I don’t want you to point to some pundit or blog post and take it on their authority, because I’ve already researched several idiot pundits who are talking directly out of their asses when it comes to the data. I want you to point to the raw data that I can examine for myself. This means links. I refuse to waste any more of my time on speculative bullshit or “Well, I’ll wager that the Texas jobs don’t really count because…” If you’re willing to wager, take that money and put it towards finding the actual data. In short, put up or shut up.
I’m not cranky, I swear.
Anyway, let’s deal with the complaints in no particular order:
“Texas has an unemployment rate of 8.2%. That’s hardly exceptional.”
See… that’s what I thought when I started looking at the data. I knew that Utah had a lower unemployment rate than Texas and I kept hearing that Texas was go great at jobs, blah, blah, blah, so I looked up the unemployment rate.
Nothing special.
So I was going to drive my point home that Texas was nothing special by looking at their raw employment numbers and reporting on those. That’s when I saw this:
This may not look like anything special, but I’ve been looking closely at employment data for a couple years now and I’ve become very accustomed to seeing data that looks like this.
In a “normal” employment data set, we can easily look at it and say “Yep, that’s where the recession happened. Sucks to be us.” But not with Texas. With Texas, we say “Damn. Looks like they’ve recovered already.”
(To get to this data, go to this link http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/dsrv?la then select the state or states you want, the select “Statewide”, then select the states again, then select the metrics you want to see.)
But if Texas has so many jobs, why do they have such a high unemployment rate? Let’s take a closer look at that data.
As a percentage of the number of pre-recession jobs, here is a chart of the growth of a selection of states. (For clarity, in this chart I selected a number of the largest states and tried to focus on states that have relatively good economic reputations. I did not chart all 50 states b/c it would have taken me too long.)
We can see that Texas has grown the fastest, having increased jobs by 2.2% since the recession started. I want to take a moment and point out that second place is held by North Dakota. I added North Dakota to my list of states to show something very important. North Dakota currently has the lowest unemployment rate of any state at 3.2%. And yet Texas is adding jobs at a faster rate than North Dakota. How can this be?
The reason is that people are flocking to Texas in massive numbers. Starting at the beginning of the recession (December 2007), let’s look at how this set of states have grown in their labor force.
As you can see, Texas isn’t just the fastest growing… it’s growing over twice as fast as the second fastest state and three times as fast as the third. Given that Texas is (to borrow a technical term) f***ing huge, this growth is incredible.
People are flocking to Texas in massive numbers. This is speculative, but it *seems* that people are moving to Texas looking for jobs rather than moving to Texas for a job they already have lined up. This would explain why Texas is adding jobs faster than any other state but still has a relatively high unemployment rate.
“Sure, Texas has lots of jobs, but they’re mostly low-paying/minimum wage jobs”
Let’s look at the data. Here’s a link: Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates
Texas median hourly wage is $15.14… almost exactly in the middle of the pack (28th out of 51 regions). Given that they’ve seen exceptional job growth (and these other states have not) this does not seem exceptionally low.
But the implication here is that the new jobs in Texas, the jobs that Texas seems to stand alone in creating at such a remarkable pace, are low paying jobs and don’t really count.
If this were true, all these new low-paying jobs should be dragging down the wages data, right? But if we look at the wages data since the beginning of the recession (click to enlarge, states are listed alphabetically)
And it turns out that the opposite is true. Since the recession started hourly wages in Texas have increased at a 6th fastest pace in the nation.
As a side note, the only blue state that has faster growing wages is Hawaii. Just thought I’d get that jab in since so many people have been making snarky “Yeah, I could get a job in Texas is I wanted to flip burgers!” comments at me on Twitter.
“Texas is oil country and the recent energy boom is responsible for the incredible jobs increase.”
In identifying “energy jobs” I cast as wide a net as possible. If you want to replicate my findings, go to this link: http://www.bls.gov/sae/data.htm, click on “One-Screen Data Search”, then select “Texas”, then select “Statewide”, then in Supersectors select “Mining and Logging”, “Non-Durable Goods” and “Transportation and Utilities” and then in Industries select “Mining and Logging”, “Natural Gas Distribution”, “Electric Power Generation” and “Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing”.
Tedious, I know, but transparency is important and this is how you get the data.
When we finally get the data, we discover that energy isn’t really the biggest part of the Texas economy. Increases in jobs in the energy sector (or closely related to it) account for about 25% of the job increases in the last year. Since the energy sector only makes up 3% of all employment, there is some truth to this claim.
However, take the energy sector completely out of the equation and Texas is still growing faster than any other state. This indicates to us that the energy sector is not a single sector saving Texas from the same economic fate as the rest of the states. It’s not hurting, but Texas would still be growing like a weed without it.
“Texas has 100,000 unsustainable public sector jobs that inflate the growth numbers.”
I’m not sure where this one comes from, but the numbers are these (and can be found by selecting government employment from the data wizard at this link http://www.bls.gov/sae/data.htm):
Counting from the beginning of the recession (December 2007) the Texas public sector has grown 3.8%, or a little under 70,000 employees. This is faster than normal employment, but it’s not off the charts.
Given that the Texas economy has grown so much and private sector jobs have grown so much, that doesn’t strike me as an unsustainable growth in the public sector.
But, just in case you’re really worried about it, you can lay your fears to rest because in the last year the Texas public sector has shrunk by 26,000 jobs. In the last 12 months, Texas lost 31,300 federal employees, trimmed 3,800 state jobs, and increased local government jobs by 8,400 jobs.
(To be fair, this was partially driven by the role Texas employees played in the census, which inflated federal job numbers this time last year. Since the census numbers stabilized, federal employment has been at about break-even.)
As you can see, we’re nowhere near the “100,000 unsustainable jobs” number.
My Personal Favorite Chart
I’ll leave you with my personal favorite chart. I mentioned at the beginning that Texas is seeing high unemployment in a large part because they’re growing so damn fast. The problem with this from a charts and graphs perspective is that it leaves worse states off the hook, making them look better than they actually are. Looking at unemployment alone, we would conclude that Wisconsin has a better economy than Texas. But Wisconsin is still 120K short of it’s pre-recession numbers. The only reason they look better than Texas is because 32,000 people fled the state.
During that time, 739,000 people fled into Texas. Anyone who takes that data and pretends that this is somehow bad news for Texas is simply not being honest. At the worst, I’d call it a good problem to have.
So, to give something of a better feeling for the economic situation across states, this chart takes the population of the states I selected above and judges the current job situation against the population as it stood at the beginning of the recession.
Using that metric, Texas would have a very low unemployment rate of 2.3%. But the fact that unemployment in the United States is fluid means that the unemployed flock to a place where there are jobs, which inflates its unemployment rate (at least in the short term). It’s not a bad thing for Texas… it just looks bad when dealing with the isolated “unemployment %” statistic.
UPDATE: @francisgagnon on Twitter felt that this chart was dishonest because it charts Texas as having 2.3% unemployment and (in his words so I don’t get him wrong): “It assumes immigrants create no jobs. But more people = more consumers = more jobs.”
He is absolutely right about this. I tried to be clear above that this chart doesn’t account for the fluid nature of an economy with immigration and departures of hundreds of thousands of people, but I don’t want to leave anyone with the wrong impression. So here it is: This chart doesn’t account for the fluid nature of an economy with immigrations and departures of hundreds of thousands of people. The point of this chart is not to say “Texas should have 2.3% unemployment if only things were fair.” Instead, it is an attempt to chart job growth in such a way that controls for people leaving one job market to enter another. To say “Wisconsin has a better job market than Texas because its unemployment rate is 0.6% lower” is a wholly untrue statement even though it cites accurate numbers. What this chart is meant to do is not posit a counter-factual, but to give a visual representation of the employment reality that is obscured by the way we calculate unemployment numbers.
END UPDATE
And… that’s it.
You may have noticed that I don’t mention Rick Perry very much here. That is because Rick Perry is, in my opinion, ancillary to this entire discussion. He was governor while these these numbers happened, so good for him. Maybe that means these jobs they are his “fault”. Maybe the job situation is the result of his policies. Or maybe Texas is simply the least bad option in a search for a favorable economic climate.
That is not an argument I’m having at this exact moment. My point is to show that most of the “excuses” you will hear about Texas’ job statistics are based in nothing more than a hope that Rick Perry had nothing to do with them and not on a sound understanding of the data.
My advice to anti-Perry advocates is this: Give up talking about Texas jobs. Texas is an incredible outlier among the states when it comes to jobs. Not only are they creating them, they’re creating ones with higher wages.
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 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.”
People will continue to argue about the data. But hopefully this will be helpful in sorting out reality from wishful and desperate thinking. I mentioned on Twitter that the Texas jobs situation was nothing short of miraculous. This is why I said that and why I’m standing by that statement.
William Laudermilk: The cost-of-living adjustment data you cite originally comes from ACCRA, which is helpful for upper-income professionals relocating from one U.S. city to another, but not so useful for adjusting state median HH income. (ACCRA methodology explained, below, from its FAQ.) Namely, some big-ticket items–like health insurance premiums–won’t show up in that CES data because those white-collar workers tend to get premiums paid for by their employers, and do not pay them out-of-pocket. This is not the case for about HALF of Texas workers or their dependents: they don’t have job-sponsored health care. Their options are: come up with $11,000 annually to buy health insurance for themselves & their family, or go uninsured. Factor that in and the TX cost-of-living numbers change significantly. I also disagree with your definition of wealth, because it’s not just income (adj for time or geography), but also assets and outstanding debt, that determine purchasing power. Looking at all of these, I do agree with you that TX is good at producing wealth, but mostly for the wealthy.
“ACCRA: How are the averages weighted and what constitutes “midmanagement”? Each item priced is a surrogate for an entire category of consumer expenditures. …The weights assigned to each item come from the Consumer Expenditures Survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. C2ER uses the proportional distribution of spending by households in the top quintile of income and by households where the reference person is professional or managerial to assign weights representing a midmanagement standard of living.”
I think causation is the important thing left out of this data mine presented here. What I have seen/experienced in relation to the “texas debate” for jobs, largely revolves around sound bites and press releases more related to PR spin than actual facts. Then, when the average unemployed person hears this, they uproot and move (since they weren’t home owners or were foreclosed upon). This would be the majority of the movers, while some are nabbed by head hunters and offered a job if they move, or the even fewer buisnesses that move and take employees with them (looking by volume or frequency not a biased trend or preference).
Now this has nothing to do with any one individual’s policy or policy comparison from where they were moving from, but more along the lines of herding sheep. How these sheep benefit Texas in the long term is arguable at best as with more people begets more needs and services. If the government is cutting back on services at the state and local level, while population expands with a major element residing being unemployed it seems more like a burden than a benefit (this would be despite federal funding based upon continuing claims, or other styles of “welfare” items that receive federal funding). The other side of the view is the private sector services also have to expand to meet the demand, which is where you get the minimum wage jobs argument.
Your article does highlight some of the divisions on which those jobs are getting broken down. However, you can’t itemize the actual positions of which they are filling. You attempt to draw a conclusion based upon average wage earned within the state, however those figures would be drawn upon all wages earned not just those in jobs that were added. What would be more useful to capture would be the mode average wage earned of positions added since 2009, since both median and mean averages will get biased the higher the overal wage scale goes, but then again the top ~10% of wage earners I doubt were added in the last 2-3 years (note: i do realize you are deriving your figures from others sources and I am not calling you out specifically for a public records request to obtain that information, just making an observation).
an example of the poor quality on some other blogs:
Jared Bernstein has a very widely quoted blog with a graph (see below) which claims to show that the TXm (texas miracle) is due to gov’t jobs.
See if you can spot his error
he takes 2007 and 2010 as his points; clearly, 2010 was the low point in non gov’t jobs and the high point in govt (census) – if you choose the right range you can do anything…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/17/1007993/-Rick-Perrys-Texas-Miracle-consisted-of-125,000-new-government-jobs#comments
While you’ve shown that Texas would still experience massive job growth even without its abundant supply of energy, would it have the same effect on wages?
That is, would wages still be increasing at the 6th highest rate in the country if we subtracted jobs related to energy – perhaps the energy industry inflates wages, and high-paying jobs in that sector help to counterbalance wages from McJobs?
MoneyRates.com has ranked the states on a person’s ability to make a living based on the following:
$ Average state wages
$ State unemployment rate
$ State tax rate
$ State cost of living
Partial results:
#3 Texas
#30 New York
#47 California
You can quibble about the imperfections in the cost-of-living data or the methods used, but they won’t change the rankings much.
Like it or not, Texas is far exceeding the two giant Liberal states in job AND wealth creation for the average person and household.
There’s an excellent article on Newgeography.com by Eamon Moynihan titled ” High Cost Of Living Leaves Some States Uncompetitive” that helps explain why California and New York are falling so far behind states like Texas.
Mr Laudermilk –
Could you please provide a link to these rankings?
I’d like to better understand the gap between this blog’s quoted BLS numbers:
“Texas median hourly wage is $15.14… almost exactly in the middle of the pack (28th out of 51 regions). Given that they’ve seen exceptional job growth (and these other states have not) this does not seem exceptionally low.”
To these numbers drawn from http://www.bls.gov/ro6/fax/minwage_tx.htm
“The median hourly earnings for all hourly-paid wage and salary workers in Texas stood at $11.20 per hour in 2010; nationally, the median was $12.50.3. For men and for women, the median hourly rates in Texas were $12.13 and $10.24, respectively. (See table 1.) Nationally, the median hourly rates were $13.76 for men and $11.83 for women.
Texas were $12.13 and $10.24, respectively. (See table 1.) Nationally, the median hourly rates were $13.76 for men and $11.83 for women. Texas, at 9.5 percent, tied with Mississippi for the highest proportion of hourly-paid workers earning at or below the prevailing Federal minimum wage among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2010. Alabama and West Virginia followed, each at 9.3 percent.
Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and California had the lowest percentage of workers earning at or below the Federal minimum wage (2 percent or less). Texas accounted for 12.6 percent of all U.S. workers paid at or below the Federal minimum wage in 2010, down from 13.3 percent in 2009.”
@Sam
There is a difference between median wage and minimum wage. You seem to be conflating the two.
The data you linked to was the median hourly wage of hourly paid workers. This measure will naturally be lower than the median wage estimate of all occupations (the data used in the original post)
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Great set of data.
I’d like to answer how Perry can take credit for this, when Texans have always done this. The answer is that Perry has staved off all the liberal influences that have attempted to change us. He has, over and over, taken hits for lowering spending whenever he can on social issues, and focused on business.
That’s not to say we can’t quibble on little things like the vaccine issue, or even big issues like the toll-road push and the franchise tax, but the man has been in office for a long time, and whenever he can, he consistently pushes the debate in the right direction. It would be VERY easy to do something different.
When we get excited about a Governor Christie and his excellent rhetoric, it is easy to forget how simple it is for him to succeed. All he has to do is just turn down the spending spigot a little bit, and he’s a huge winner. But when you govern a large state that already is number three or something on the Low Spending States, it is much more difficult to cut anything without everyone whining about “the children” (who apparently would prefer to be slaves to the state all their lives in order to pay for their all-day kindergarten).
Someone has read How to lie with Statiscs. The Data presented by the BLS does not support the reported increase # or % in jobs = employed or not employed public sector jobs. Pretty graphs though.
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the “reason” for job creation is an important factor, one that can point to things that can be done nationwide to promote job growth. This posting, while excellent, does not seem to point to any particular reasons. Texas job growth success did not happen because Rick Perry talks a good game. It happened because?
Some say lower business tax rates than other states. Some say fewer regulations on business than other states. some say that Texas offers generous incentives to lure businesses to relocate. Some say all three.
This is what needs to be investigated and detailed next. And before the presidential primary season gears up. Perry needs to have these answers on the tip of his tongue. Otherwise the left wing propaganda machine (which already is ramping up) will destroy him.
Nice job on the research, btw.
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@Roy Bloom, how so?
It is easy to show up on a blog and take pot shots. You don’t provide any data, any counterexamples, or even an argument. Your entire post, and apparently your entire argument is “you lie because I said so.”
Chuck Mann said/asked: “Texas job growth success did not happen because Rick Perry talks a good game. It happened because?”
Job growth (net growth anyway; TX has also lost jobs in the recession) happened in large part because the state population grew — twice as fast as the US average in the last decade. And that growth came more from “natural increase” (births minus deaths) than from migration (domestic or foreign, legal or not).* http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-comp-chg.html
This creates jobs in what labor market pointyheaded types call “personal services” such as retail and food service; also in education (local school districts or “govt jobs creation”) and health care, sectors that have grown fairly rapidly in TX. Long-term growth in govt jobs in TX is real, not just a 2010 Census-worker blip. Or at least it was, until the school budget cuts made this year start going into effect.
Job loss theories: In a recession, the loss of manufacturing jobs is usually the worst blow. But TX had a below-average % of these jobs to begin with (% of civilian empl), and the ones it has are in areas where demand doesn’t drop off as much (such as petrochemicals, military contracts) when consumers are unemployed.
Notice I left out the word “success” in describing TX job growth? That’s because poverty rates, unemployment rates, uninsured rates, and so on have not improved much. Rates of poverty and no health insurance in TX are among the worst in the nation, even when unemployment rate = average. Job quality, not job quantity, is what matters in the long run if Texas is ever going to be a great home to ALL its families & workers, not just those in the top 10%.
More fuel for the discussion/data to back up much of what I said:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTSelectServlet?ds_name=ACS_2009_1YR_G00_&_lang=en&_ts=332339296359
PS – Advice for anyone looking at the BLS datasets: be aware that depending on which ones you use, you’ll see different median/mean hourly wages, total number of jobs, etc., because some of the surveys ask employers about the type and # of jobs they have (these tend to be jobs covered by minimum wage laws/other federal benefits); others ask people about the work they do (whether or not they are on a payroll, or “self employed”). Seasonal adjustment usually matters for monthly data.
*If the governor or other state leaders want to take credit for TX’s high birth rate (including teen birth rate), maybe that’s valid; they seem to be deadset on eliminating access to family planning and anything in public schools that isn’t “abstinence only.”
@ Jake
I don’t think you grasp the nature of my question. Minimum wage doesn’t come into it. The question I raised is over the median wage number cited by the blog and the source the author draws it from.
If you follow the link provided, (without additional guidance as is the case for most of the other data sets) you are greeted by a wall of data sets with no easily discernible answer.
I did find his 15.14 number, but not without a bit of effort. A search for “median hourly wage 2010” returns “Minimum Wage Workers in Texas – 2010
28 Mar 2011 … The median hourly earnings for all hourly-paid wage and salary workers in Texas stood at $11.20 per hour in 2010” as its second result.
What is more, a Google search for “texas 15.14 median hourly wage” returns the BLS page that I cited as its first result. Only by following a link from the Huffington Post that was on the second page of search results did I ultimately reach a page where the author’s numbers could actually be found.
The fact that close scrutiny indicates a gap between the median hourly earnings for hourly-paid wage and salary workers and the author’s number is significant. If he is attempting to paint a rosy economic picture in Texas, then a middle of the pack number is far better than the reality that Texas’s median wage for these workers is $1.30 lower at $11.20 than the national median ($12.50).
Furthermore, when the data under discussion appears under the caption “Sure, Texas has lost of jobs, but their mostly low-paying/minimum wage jobs” I feel it is germane to mention that Texas is tied with Mississippi for the highest proportion of hourly-paid workers earning at or below the prevailing Federal minimum wage, at 9.5 percent.
One good reason why “[s]ince the recession started hourly wages in Texas have increased at a 6th fastest pace in the nation” is that the federal minimum wage increased in 2007 for the first time in a decade. From the $5.15 where it stood before July 2007 it increased over two years to its current $7.25. I’d imagine that for many Texans that $2.10 did a lot to increase their income, perhaps that contributes to the rapidly increasing hourly wages.
I feel that the 11.20 median is more relevant because it represents those who are hourly-paid wage-earners. Should Texas burger flippers be lumped in with oil tycoons when considering the former’s position relative to their peers in other states? Why would you choose 15.14 unless you wanted to manipulate the data to advance an argument?
Furthermore, the BLS states “BLS does not routinely estimate hourly earnings for non-hourly workers because of data concerns that arise in producing these estimates.” Also to be found at
I hope I’ve answered your questions, Jake, and that I’ve been able to articulate why I had initial question’s about the author’s data selection and presentation. I hope that I’ve provided enough data and rationale so that I don’t come across as taking pot shots.
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Policy may or may not make jobs. But the hypocrites on the left want to take credit for the total number of jobs created while Obama is in office (including those created in Texas) but then want to turn around and attack Perry about the very jobs that the just got done taking credit for.
Thank you for a very good suggestion from you.
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Kev
I don’t think people are flocking here for 100+ heat and high humidity.
To all
The governor of texas is not a particularly strong position. His strongest power is the veto pen. The wisdom of what to sign and what not to sign is often overlooked. The most powerful person in Texas gov’t is the Lt. Governor as he controls the state senate, thus what can or cannot become law.
Please research and post Perry’s numbers on public education.
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So what you’re saying is that people and businesses are moving to Texas from other states, creating an undeniable boomlet.
But it’s not something that Perry has done, unless if you count praying for it. And since Texas’s gain has been at the expense of the states losing population, it’s nothing that Perry could duplicate as president.
Perry gets my vote. Thanks for the info. Go Tea Party!!!
The graph of median income in this article is deceptive. Texas is tied with Mississippi for the state with the highest percentage of minimum-wage jobs. There’s nothing dishonest about saying that burger-flipping jobs are a major factor in the Rick Perry Texas economy.
As for job growth, it turns out that for the past two years, Texas’ bad 8.2% unemployment rate would have been even worse if the number of government jobs has grown, partly fueled by Obama’s stimulus money, while the number of private sector jobs actually shrank.
And this isn’t only the biased liberal media who are saying this, it’s also the Wall Street Journal that’s debunked Perry’s economic “miracle” in Texas:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903999904576470232177476242.html?mod=ITP_pageone_1
I presume that the bright red line on most charts is Michigan.
If so, their economy is really in the tank, and people are fleeing the state like never before.
And the former governor has the audacity to teach economics at a CA college – and the college has the insanity to have her teach our children.
Nuts!
I’m curious what happens when you remove the energy sector jobs from the median wage analysis. Do you have that data?
A question. What is the relationship between staes in differing “unemployment benifit Qualifications”. If a person moves to Texas, formerly unemployed in another state, what happens to the numbers? Does moving to Texas and setting up residence then make that individual not qualified for “unemployeement benifits” from the State of Texas? Does that mean, that recent… 6 mo.? 12 mo.? “immigrant” cannot be counted through the Texas system? Are there more unemployeed in a state where migration happens.. to.. than can be accounted for in conventional employment counting methods? Since there are so many moving to Texas, and Texas employment #’s are @ 8.2%.. if 10% of those moving to Texas
do not find jobs and are not counted as “unemployed”, what would the #’s reflect. How many are leaving Texas on a monthly basis also should be taken into account as far as health, of the Economy. If those leaving, for example, are 1/3 of those coming into the State, are those also not counted into unemployed ranks,,, from the State of Texas…
@Sam,
You asked why there was a difference between the median hourly wage figures you found using a google search and the data the author used, and I tried to provide an answer. If you follow the author’s link you can find the data he used (it is the state cross industry estimates for 2010).
“I feel that the 11.20 median is more relevant because it represents those who are hourly-paid wage-earners. Should Texas burger flippers be lumped in with oil tycoons when considering the former’s position relative to their peers in other states? Why would you choose 15.14 unless you wanted to manipulate the data to advance an argument?”-Sam
Shapiro using the median as opposed to the average is the correct measure precisely because the high wages of oil tycoons don’t distort the number (like they would an average). Using the median counts one person as one person. Texas having a high median wage for all occupations means that lots of the jobs in Texas pay better than the median hourly wage measure that you prefer. More importantly, Shapiro looks at the percent change in the median hourly wage: if lots of the new jobs are “burger flippers” then the %Change should be low since lots of people would be piling into the median at low wages. Shapiro shows that isn’t the case. Shapiro also looks at %change since the beginning of the recession, which was long after the 2007 federal minimum wage increase, so that wouldn’t influence the numbers.
I do appreciate your willingness to articulate your arguments, and I am glad that you are taking a proactive approach to looking at the data. A dose of skepticism is always healthy. Nevertheless, Shapiro has done good solid analysis here.
You are right that maybe he should have mentioned the percentage of people who are working at below the federal minimum wage, but again, if lots of people are piling into those jobs, then the median wage would be growing slowly or even shrinking, but that isn’t the case. Texas has perhaps always had lots of people that work below the Fed min. wage (lots of teenagers for example could fall into this category, as would waiters, I think maybe some farm workers as well, etc.). Working below the Fed min. wage isn’t a very good measure of prosperity because of the wide range of jobs that can pay below the Fed. min wage.
Texas does profit from a very nice base-load of petrochemical industry jobs – about 30% of the nation’s refining capacity, and maybe as much as 40% of many organic chemicals, are manufactured in Texas. That’s thanks to massive infrastructure along the Texas Gulf Coast region, from Port Arthur to Corpus Christi, that doesn’t get idled in a downturn the same way auto lines might get shut down. Why are those in Texas? Historical reasons (originally located next to Texas’ oilpatches), lots and lots of land, salt dome formations in Freeport, and certain waterways (Houston Ship Channel, Neches River) that everyone accepts will have a high level of pollution. Of course, the double edge of this sword is that Texas will always generate more pollution than other states … even if it were much better (it isn’t) at regulating industries. The fact that Houston is 3 hours from Dallas-Ft Worth and both are 2-3 hours from Austin/San Antonio also helps a lot, since there’s lots of still cheap land to expand out along the interstates connecting these cities. But nobody’s talking about the wall Texas is hitting thanks to all that growth – WATER. This summer’s drought is seeing agricultural and ranching uses being cut off as cities get first rights to water supplies. As Texas population keeps growing, the fact that for 10 years Perry did little or nothing to address this looming problem should be a major factor in considering whether he really knows how to manage growth, or just ride it.
And things were going so swimmingly when Ma Richards was at the helm. 🙂
Even a weak governor can do a lot of damage, or encourage growth and prosperity.
Thanks for the time you spent putting this data together into such an understandable, readable, well documented and transparent format! I had a comment about one thing you said at the end though.
You seemed to imply that if we make the claim that government doesn’t create jobs, then we can’t also claim that elected officials have an effect on jobs. Unfortunately though, government has an affect on jobs. While the government can’t really create jobs, it can certainly get in the way with over bearing regulations and tax burdens that cause companies to move to more hospitable locations and bring jobs with them.
We need to stop asking government to create jobs for us and instead tell them to get out of the way so we can create our own jobs.
This post makes an excellent argument for why immigration is good for the economy! Not much else, though, I’m afraid.
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Guess I wont be seeing this piece on msnbc anytime soon. No he can’t take jobs from other states as president. He can create a job friendly atmosphere in this country again though.
Duh. Posing as a Perry hater, while completely singing his praise? Oldest trick in the book.
Let’s not talk about Texan jobs? Okay, if you can stop Perry from thumping his chest like a gorilla on jobs, everytime he’s close to a mike, we’ll stop talking about HIS job-creating skill.
Also, claiming that Texas is an outlier, is like claiming American Exceptionalism, which is especially lame considering Texas actually does WORSE than Federal on jobs creation:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/15/perrys-employment-record-in-texas/
Given the growth of the population, Texas should have created MORE jobs than it has now.
It’s like this: Let’s Texas had just 50 people, 22 of them with jobs. Then poplation grew to 75, you’d expect jobs to grow to 33. But they didn’t. They grew to 30. You can claim that Texas added 8 jobs, while the rest of the country added just 10 or 11, but the rest of the country didn’t grown in population like Texas has.
http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2011/apr/24/barack-obama/president-obama-says-gov-perry-used-stimulus-fund-/
“If Rick Perry had nothing to do with creating jobs in Texas, than why does Obama have something to do with creating jobs anywhere?”
I’m sorry, but are you daft? Because of course:
1. Texan Gov is far weaker a role than US president
2. Obama is smarter than Perry when it comes to the economy.
3. It seems that Perry prays for more jobs, while Obama actually does something. Everyone forgot he saved the car industry?
Perry didn’t create private sector jobs, Obama did.
Perry took Obama’s money and created govt jobs, teachers. He still had to give schools that money. It was Perry’s decision to take it, and take it he did, never you mind that he’s not running schools directly.
“Policies create jobs when they are policies I like. They don’t create jobs when they are policies I dislike.”??????
Nope. Of course some policies create jobs. while others don’t
Case in point, Perry’s business tax, costs a lot, 5 billion dollars, but killed a lot of jobs.
Don’t leave the country to bozo crony capitalists like Perry.
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The problem is that Perry and his supporters don’t stop at making these claims about Texas: the facts, as you point out, stand for themselves. No, the problem is that they then, illogically, say, “Soooo, you should vote for Perry for President!”
By which they mean that if you vote for him for President he’ll enact these same policies and make it so that America creates great jobs the way that Texas did … by … bringing people … from … other states?
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we need to think about the synergy between different policies and the way in which some policies serve as de facto labor market policies especially for the population most at risk for unemployment.
Specifically, I am thinking about the incarceration rate and the rate of military enlistment.
The population most at risk for unemployment is basically the young and the brown. Prison and military enlistment both serve as de facto labor market policies. TX has much higher incarceration rates than the national average:
http://www.publicagenda.org/charts/incarceration-rate-state
TX also has a high rate of military enlistment:
http://theelectoralmap.com/2009/03/17/where-do-military-recruits-come-from/
I’m not trying to bash Perry. Rather, I think that social scientists need to do a much better job about thinking about unemployment as a social problem that certain populations have a greater risk for than others. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away: for these populations de facto labor market institutions like prison or the military fill the void left by lack of a true jobs policy. If TX had an incarceration rate or military enlistment rate at the national average unemployment in that state would likely be much higher.
Sorry I couldn’t link to better raw data. I’m sure its out there but I have many papers to write. Someone should really look into the relationship between incarceration, enlistment and unemployment with some recent data.
Food for thought……
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And don’t forget, all those oil jobs are built upon some black stuff that appeared in the ground just a mere 6000 years ago. Will wonders never cease?
Jack Myswag if you weren’t born in Texas, please move back to the state you were born in. Thank you. The State of Texas
Jack my apology. My wife says I should never try to be funny. She says I should just do what I do best and that’s creating jobs. We do work from Phoenix, AZ, to Denver, CO to Oklahoma City, OK to Lafayette, LA to Texas. I’ve worked in 32 states and 5 out of the 10 largest cities in the Union. I can personally tell you and everyone else that Texas has the best of everything to offer companies and the people who live here. Starting with a:
1. pro-business government
2. limited regulations,
3. lower taxes,
4. a good educated workforce,
5. pro-development regulations,
6. good housing,
7. low cost of living
I’m not a fan of Perry and you can write that in stone. You can also write that Texas is the best place in the Union to work and live. Where a man can work hard and benefit from his work, choose to work where and for whom he wants to without a union boss telling if and when he can work and without having the union in his pocket.
No matter what you or I think of Perry during his time in office Texas has prospered and we are doing a hell of a lot better than most of the country. You can’t say that about anything Obama has done.
What I want from a Governor and a President is for them to keep the hell out of my life and out of my way. We have projects in San Antonio, New Braunfels, Austin, Dallas, Denver, Oklahoma City and Houston all of which are private sector creations without the help of the State or the Federal government. We need to add 200 employees to our workforce within the next 10 months but can only do so if Obama and his cronies get out of our way and create an environment friendly to job creation by:
1. lowering or keeping corporate taxes low
2. lower personal taxes
3. lower capital gains taxes
4. fewer regulations, pull the plug on the overreaching EPA and OSHA
5. 2 year exemption on employer matching employees taxes for new hire
6. tax break for job training and/or continuing education program
7. kill Obama Care
8. restrict trade with China
What you do have to give Perry is that he supports an environment that is good for business and business growth. You can’t say that about Obama.
Add the NLRB to the list of agencies that need to be deleted.
Last, but certainly not least, is the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) unconstitutional attack on Boeing. Earlier this year, the radically pro-labor NLRB blocked Boeing from opening a brand-new factory in South Carolina to build its Dreamliner airplanes, supposedly because Boeing built the facility to spite union workers in Washington. Whatever the motivation, the NLRB’s actions have left approximately 1,000 South Carolinians out of work.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/07/attacking-us-companies-is-no-way-to-create-jobs/#ixzz1XHdyodR3