Despite Job Growth, Texas Unemployment Rate Worst in Decades
Gov. Rick Perry — touting the state's job growth on the campaign trail — got some bad news this morning: The state's unemployment rate is the worst in nearly a quarter century.
Texas added nearly 30,000 jobs during the month of July — the 10th month running that the state has experienced positive job growth. But despite that private-sector growth, the state's unemployment rate rose slightly in the same time period, from 8.2 percent to 8.4 percent, hovering just under the national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. Meanwhile, government jobs fell by 9,400 in July ...
Comments (22)
Sally Perez-Ramos via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Um yeah! Psh.
Robert Adams via Texas Tribune on Facebook
How could so many people have this wrong. Can we get Fox "News" a fact checker please?
Martin Hyman via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Fox News and Fact in the same sentence? Pricless!
Mary Sue James Sipes via Texas Tribune on Facebook
ON OUR WORST DAY WE ARE STILL BETTER OFF THAN THE REST...TEXAS IS LIKE THAT
Mark Wentlandt via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Is there a contest board at the TT to see who can squeeze Perry into as many leads as possible? This is going from irritating to grating.
Roy David Landry via Texas Tribune on Facebook
boy don't i know this one well!!!!
Martin Hyman via Texas Tribune on Facebook
On your best day you still have suffered for 16 years with idiots as Governor!
Dale H Curry via Texas Tribune on Facebook
But don't worry, the tea party rhetoric will tell eveyone the lie that TX is great for jobs! Only if your career goals is for McD's
Jerry Chinagozi Okafor via Texas Tribune on Facebook
TX is my adopted state so this isn't good news, no matter how I feel about the factious governor. He is trying to be a politician rather than a leader. A leader makes difficult choices rather than stick to talking points.
Karen Spivey-Cummings via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Perry will just blame it on Obama.
Bill Eaves via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Maybe, but it is the best in America NOW!!
Karen Spivey-Cummings via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Budget cuts = job cuts = unemployment. What part of that don't people get?
Leslie Hancock via Texas Tribune on Facebook
People have been moving to Texas in droves for the jobs -- more are moving here than even the most robust job creation can keep up with. Hence there are still more job seekers than jobs available and the unemployment number goes up.
Belinda L Moore via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Every job I have had has been full-time, for the last two years all I have been able to obtain is part-time. So, as far as I am concerned I am beginning to wonder if full-time is possible again?
John Frederick via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I keep hearing about job growth, but most articles fail to mention that job growth is positive in mostly minimum wage jobs, thus further widening the income gap in Texas. I guess everything can seem coming up roses, but it really depends on which side of the gated community fence you're sitting in.
Sally Perez-Ramos via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I miss Ann Richards.
Martin Hyman via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Leslie, watch people vote with their feet in the coming years as the shit hits the fan in Texas due to the "job creators" getting everything that they wanted from the idiot governors of the past 16 years.
Renee E. Babcock via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Bill, TX does not have the lowest unemployment rate in the US. We are #27, meaning 26 states have lower unemployment than Texas. A quick google search and all. Meanwhile, with the budget cuts, more people are going to be losing their jobs effective 9/1, and the cuts to services will go into effect on that same date (beginning of the state's FY). The hurt hasn't come yet, but it's just around the corner.
Oh, and so that you don't think I'm making shit up, like some people do, here's my source for my claim in the above paragraph:
http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
John Goodin
The last time unemployment was this high in Texas Ronald Reagan was President and Rick Perry was a democrat.
Erik Dahl
Leslie Hancock is correct. If so many people had not been moving to Texas to find a job, and Texas' total population had remained static, it would have the second lowest unemployment rate, the first being North Dakota. Texas leads the country in jobs created. To use the unemployment rate only is to only not tell the whole picture. If other states had the same beneficial policies to job growth as Texas, then other states would be doing well and they would not have to move to Texas to find a job, and the unemployment rate would go down. I have many physician friends who moved to Texas because of a much better malpractice environment for physicians, and now Texas' rural communities have more physicians than the rural communities of other states.
Rudy Gonzales
Perry in not for pro-growth, he's for enriching his buddies and close friends! This Yahoo continues to morph into what he thinks people want to see, hear and read as he now seeks the backing of the TEA party elitist. With no degree in Economics or Sciences, he spews manufactured lies as though he is knowledgeable. Perry's use of the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, development programs that offer capital for entrepreneurs with the goal of luring job-rich businesses to the state, to Perry's personal advantage. Face it - It's open season on Rick Perry and the failing TEA party as they are on the national scene now and they're in for a rude awakening! But let's not forget Politics is at the local level and that is where the TEA party activist are prolific! Perry is not a job making machine. The jobs he claims to be responsible for, are the federal jobs created. A liar and pseudo head, America needs to investigate him thoroughly and still not vote for him as he professes to TEA party loyalist and openly courts their backing. TEA party-ers have already corrupted and de-bunked the GOP, the defunct GOP are steering away from their radical narrow-minded rhetoric. Perry condemned President Obama’s stimulus and bailout package, he actively courted these funds, plugging the $6 billion hole in his previous budget almost entirely with stimulus money. Perry’s problems extend beyond his mediocre fiscal performance. He also has a crony-capitalism problem. Grants from two funds he created, ostensibly to seed tech startups and lure companies, found their way into the pockets of his campaign contributors. This won’t go down well with voters weary of government waste and abuse, especially since Perry had final authority over the funds, and not an independent agency as is usually the case. Worse, Perry refused to axe these programs even to plug the deficit. Perry’s constant jousting his strong jobs record has been lying to the Texas voters and not the nation'a voters.
Erik Dahl
To Rudy Gonzales,
• Roughly 39,000 out of the 302,000 new jobs created in Texas since the recovery began -- or 13 percent -- were in government. And 82 percent of those new government jobs were in local government. Texas's public sector has expanded by more than 2 percent in the past two years -- very nearly as fast as its private sector.
• Another 39,500 -- just over 13 percent -- were in oil and gas extraction, or in support activities for mining, a category that includes oil-field services companies.
• Even more -- 78,000, or 26 percent -- were in home health-care services or "ambulatory health-care services," while an additional 64,000, or 21 percent, were in "administrative and support services". Another 43,000, or 14 percent, were in "employment services."
• And 24,000, or 7.9 percent, were in "food services and drinking places" -- restaurants and bars, essentially.
Together, those categories account for nearly 95 percent of the new jobs created in Texas.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/texas-job-boom-under-perry-driven-government-energy-174054077.html
Discussing the issues based on facts is more useful. Name calling rhetoric, debasing the tea party, who have done an important job on focusing the country on unsustainable spending, only indicates an inability to be reasonable.
Additionally, if you are an Obama supporter, then you certainly are disqualifying him by your argument as he does not have an economics degree, never really accomplished anything in his life other than being a lawyer and his accomplishments as president proves that he does not deserve a second term, never deserved a first actually.