(Image source: Dallas Morning News)
BY CHRISTINA HARTMAN
You're watching multisource politics news analysis from Newsy.
Texas has outpaced much of the nation in job growth. Not much disagreement there. But who gets credit? That’s where the competing perspectives come in.
RICK PERRY: “40% of all the jobs created in America from June of 2009 until the present were created in Texas. I know how to create jobs.”
Texas Governor Rick Perry is making his state’s fast-paced job growth a centerpiece of his campaign -- arguing his stance against high taxes on job creators -- has worked.
But as WFAA in Dallas reports -- others say there’s more to it then that.
“According to studies by the Dallas Federal Reserve, the low tax burden is just one factor; geology, geography and demography are also critical. The energy industry (geology) spurred jobs through higher oil prices and rising gas drilling. Texas' proximity to Mexico (geography) grew trade. And growing population and immigration (demography) supplied labor — with both low and high skill levels.”
But it’s the low-level skills that fueled most of the growth in Texas -- reports NPR.
“One of the reasons a young Texas couple can buy a new four-bedroom, three-bathroom house in a Dallas suburb for $189,000, and one reason is because immigrants, both legal and illegal, are willing to shingle those roofs in 100-degree heat for relatively low pay. Hammond says easy access to inexpensive labor has long been a critical part of the economy's success.”
The New York Times’ Paul Krugman goes further -- saying the Texas jobs picture is nothing to brag about.
“What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. ... ‘Well, duh.’ The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs ... involves a fallacy of composition: every state can’t lure jobs away from every other state.”
But in an article for the Washington Examiner -- Philip Klein calls the attacks “silly liberal criticisms.”
“If the national economy is still doing poorly when President Obama stands for reelection, attacking the job gains in Texas is not going to be an effective political strategy, for several reasons. One is that with things looking that bad, any economic success story is going to look good by comparison, even if liberals try to poke holes in it.”
Texas’ unemployment rate is 8.2 percent according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s -- slightly -- lower than the national rate of 9.2 percent.
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