DPVA needs a remedial in math regarding job numbers
By JR Hoeft | Friday, August 19th, 2011 | Policy, PoliticsSo the Democrats have been carping about the 14k jobs we “lost” in June.
http://www.vademocrats.org/news/press/another-day-another-mcgimmick-surplus
http://www.vademocrats.org/news/press/it-bobs-jobs-or-bobs-bob%E2%80%99
Unfortunately, they’re outright wrong. We lost 4,454 – which is bad, but it’s not 14,000.
It’s a pretty simple calculation. Go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and take Jun 2011 employment and subtract May 2011 employment.
Unfortunately, while I think most of us learned subtraction in kindergarten, it appears Democrats are still not quite up to speed. And this is the party that’s supposedly for education?
You can run the numbers yourself here: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LASST51000003
But check this graph out if you really want to see how Governor Bob McDonnell and chief jobs creation officer, Lieutenant Gov. Bill Bolling are really doing:
Bottom Line: We’ve gained 57k jobs since the governor took office. Our labor force has grown, not contracted.
While the rest of the country has been suffering under the Obama administration, Virginia has been a source of relative stability. While our unemployment rate is still too high – it sure as heck isn’t what the rest of the country is experiencing under the president’s and Congressional Democrats’ failed leadership and policies.
if you look at the whole series of job growth during the governor’s administration, we’ve gained jobs 14 of the 19 months he’s been in office. Unemployment is down and employment is up.
So, in short, Democrats can’t do math, and the Governor is doing a good job at creating jobs.
No one said you needed to do math to spew uneducated and unprincipled propaganda from East Franklin St. But they certainly could use a remedial course.
Geez, you’d think they’d be happy that Virginia employment is doing so well…oh, maybe they’re just concerned about the lack of Democrats out of work from elected office.
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About the author
Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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9 Responses to "DPVA needs a remedial in math regarding job numbers"
So JR, are you really making such a big deal out of the creation of 57,000 jobs? First of all, the Governor and his “chief jobs creation officer” (is that a joke) had little or nothing to do with most of them. Second, we in the private sector create jobs, not the Governor. In fact, our number of jobs would be much higher but of course he has caused the firing of some 20,000 public employees since he took office. Now I think your criticism of the DPV is correct, but your hyper partisanship show every time you overreach on an article for BD.
You’re absolutely right, Mike. Government does not create jobs. I will agree with you on that. However, some administrations do create conditions that help make job growth more possible than others. I think it’s clear that the policies of this administration and the General Assembly are leading Virginia in the right direction.
Of course, if this were a Democrat, you’d be singing a different tune. But certainly you’re not hyper partisan.
What’s fascinating to me is that Mike never misses an opportunity to sing the praises of Keynesian economics, which posits that government IS responsible for creating jobs. I’ve lost track of how often Mike has tried to claim that Obama’s “stimulus” theft “saved” a whole bunch of jobs. But as soon as the evidence comes out that nationally we have lost several million jobs under Democrat President Obama, while Virginia has gained tens of thousands of jobs under Republican Governor McDonnell, suddenly Mike is screaming that government isn’t responsible for creating jobs.
I realize that intellectual honesty and integrity is not expected or exhibited at the Daily Kos, but we do respect those principles here at Bearing Drift.
“Harrumph”!
At the same time that McDonnell and Bolling were creating jobs in Virginia, unemployment rose in 31 other states: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/unemployment-in-july-rose-in-more-than-half-the-states-a-sign-that-hiring-is-weak-nationwide/2011/08/19/gIQAsrYsPJ_story.html?tid=sm_facebook
JR, your charts/graphs are a bit misleading. You are measuring new jobs in increments of 20,000 jobs, and unemployment in increments of 10,000 jobs–over the same period. Might I recommend you reconcile the spread, and show a composite graph that might be more “visual” to your readers? Which is to say, comparing apples to apples.
This false hyper partisanship in regard to economic development and job creation is getting boring. First, we in the private sector create most jobs. Second, local and regional ED officials do most of the nitty gritty work, resulting in 80% of new jobs. Third, recruiting new companies is a long term proposition; we just closed a deal in Hampton Roads with an international company we first talked to 11 years ago. I do not begrudge McDonnell or Bolling for cheerleading for Virginia, but rational posters know it is mostly just that.
Mike,
“This false hyper partisanship in regard to economic development and job creation is getting boring.” Really? Did it start to get boring when the White House was making almost weekly proclamations about the “number of jobs saved or created” after the $787B Porkulus bill was passed or did it start to get boring when Obama’s approval rating on his handling of the economy hit 26%?
Here is another boring factoid: no President since World War II has been reelected when unemployment was 7.5% or higher. Since it is very unlikely that we will hit that mark in the next 14 months, what is your strategy for November 2012? Blame Bush? Oh, yeah. It was the Tea Party. After all, they have been in the House for a whole 8 months now while the Democrats had control of both houses of Congress for the first two years of the Obama Administration.
Aren’t you glad now that Obama and the Democrats squandered so much time and capital on health care when the economy was in the toilet?
I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc., I called the Suicide Hotline.
I got a call-centre in Pakistan, and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.
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