Closer Look Proves the Texas Path to Job Growth Isn’t Best

[sonias]

Bloomberg 7/8/11
Closer Look Proves the Texas Path to Job Growth Isn’t Best

The June jobs report released today shows how hard it is for the U.S. to shake free of persistently high unemployment. The meager numbers -- only 18,000 new jobs, far less than forecast, were created and the unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent from 9.1 percent -- should intensify the search for pockets of growth. That search will inevitably lead to Texas, one of the few spots in the country where people are finding work.

It’s easy to be charmed by Texas, but it would be a mistake to think the state might serve as a national model. Texas created almost 250,000 jobs in the past two years, nearly as many as the other 49 states combined. Texas leaders, including Republican Governor Rick Perry, credit that success to low taxes and a business-friendly regulatory approach.

Yes and no. Those factors played a role. To a sizable degree, however, the state’s booming payrolls are the result of hard-to-duplicate factors, such as a fast-growing population, and unusually low wages.

(snip)
In high-skill professions, such as management and petroleum engineering, Texas salaries often exceed national norms. For unskilled labor and service employees, austerity rules. The Texas Workforce Commission, a state agency, says hourly workers have earned 4 percent to 7 percent less than their counterparts nationwide for most of the last decade. For 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau placed Texas third among states in income inequality.

Dishwashers in Texas averaged $7.90 an hour in 2009, 10.3 percent below their peers nationwide. Texas sewing-machine operators made do with $9.35 an hour, 12.6 percent below the 50- state average. Some 9.5 percent of hourly workers subsist at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That leaves Texas tied with Mississippi for the largest share of the population earning no more than the minimum wage.

Are you listening America? Perry is no miracle worker and the Texas job economy is no miracle. Do not think this faker can save the American economy. People like Perry and the corporate interests that control him put our economy in a ditch and he'll be more of the same. He's all about no regulation and low wage jobs. Pro-business over everything.

:grr: