I have to admit, even crusty old cynical me was bamboozled for a moment. A recent press release from the desk of Scott Walker touted our state’s 22nd ranking in private-sector job creation based on the most recent Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages Survey, bragging that “Wisconsin’s economy is headed in the right direction and we’re creating jobs.”
Of course, it’s fine to toot your own horn, but more and more these days Republicans are blowing high-pitched whistles only their lapdogs can hear. Witness our current House of Representatives, which appears to be one awkward Nike product placement and a couple of phenobarbital Jamba Juices away from going full Heaven’s Gate on us.
More on that later, but first we need to set the record straight on Walker’s actual jobs record.
When I saw the report about Wisconsin’s 22nd ranking in job creation from March 2012 to March 2013, I registered a brief frisson of something resembling Badger pride, until I remembered that Scott Walker is our governor and that you’re likely to get more straightforward answers about where you stand from a Vegas lap dancer.
Now, for some reason I’d thought we were still bringing up the rear on jobs, but this was the QCEW, which is universally regarded as the most accurate measure of job creation available. In fact, it was the same data set that Walker used when he was trying to fight off a recall in June of last year. Of course, the governor was playing games with the QCEW numbers then, and he’s playing games with them now.
Walker wasn’t talking about the rate of jobs growth or anything that might actually have some meaning. He was talking about the actual number of jobs created. Since we rank 20th in population, you’d expect us to be at least 20th in the raw number of jobs created. We’re not. We’re 22nd. Our governor was pulling the wool over our eyes once again, and for just a fleeting fraction of a moment, I’d fallen for it.
It was a little like hearing your idiot neighbor brag that he scored 110 on an IQ test and then moments later discovering that it was an online IQ test from Altavista.com and all the questions were about My Little Pony.
Just to put this steaming load of offal into perspective, California — that bastion of aging hippies, layabouts, and part-time pot farmers — managed to create 453,811 private-sector jobs over that same March-to-March period, nearly 19 times our state’s 24,305. Put that way, the fact that we blew the doors off Wyoming and the U.S. Virgin Islands no longer seems all that impressive.
Now, if you want to get an honest, genuine picture of where we stand, you need to look at our relative improvement in the QCEW compared to other states — not how many more cheese curd-packing jobs we’ve created than Rhode Island or how many more jobs we’re creating now than we did under Jim Doyle, who was forced to struggle with a gut-shot national economy.
On any meaningful measure, we’re still lagging — 34th in private-sector job growth from March 2012-March 2013 and 42nd (according to WisBusiness.com) since Walker’s term began. Even worse, our rate of private-sector job growth from March 2012-March 2013 (1.1%) is barely half the national rate (2%).
So is this just a random statistical hiccup that has nothing to do with our governor? It’s possible, but not likely. As UW-Madison economist Menzie Chinn told the Shepherd Express, “What is true is that Wisconsin is growing noticeably more slowly than the nation and other regional neighbors, such as Minnesota, ever since Gov. Walker’s inauguration. This could be complete coincidence in terms of timing, but simple statistical tests indicate that the difference in growth is statistically significant.”
It’s also interesting to note that we ranked as high as 11th in private-sector job growth under Jim Doyle.
Now, you may have seen a few recent ads — cooked up by the pro-Walker alchemists at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce — bragging that Wisconsin is experiencing robust job growth. Don’t believe them. The key pillar in support of that contention is the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s coincident index, which tracks potential economic growth. According to that index, Wisconsin ranks second. But as Paul Flora, senior economic analyst at the Philly Fed, told The Cap Times, “We do not consider state rankings based on the coincident and leading indexes to be valid.”
(Continued)
Perhaps even more revealing is the fact that just a few short months ago, Wisconsin ranked an abysmal 49th in the Philly Fed Index, which should be a giant red flag for anyone who would seek to attach any lasting significance to the ranking. (Full disclosure: I was fooled by the Philly Fed’s ranking once before, but never again.)
So what’s the lesson? Take anything that oozes forth from Walker’s spin machine with a grain of salt. It’s bland pabulum at best and shameless B.S. at worst.
Speaking of spinning …
The shutdown mess can be summed up pretty neatly and succinctly: Several reckless House Republicans don’t like one of our nation’s laws, so they’re throwing a temper tantrum in an attempt to eviscerate it. Full stop.
Any other story is pure spin, and if you believe one of those stories, you’re B.S.-ing yourself.
Obamacare was passed by Congress, signed by the president, and vetted by the Supreme Court. In addition, it’s survived a de facto national referendum (see Obama v. Romney) and has held up against pointless grandstanding in the House of Representatives, which has tried more than 40 times to repeal it, knowing that all such attempts had zero chance of succeeding.
Sounds like game over to me, but Tea Partiers don’t live in the real world — they live in an insular row of M.C. Escher-designed townhouses on W. Crazy Lane, South Crazy Town, State of Cray-Cray, Crazystan, USA.
Maybe one of these genius constitutional scholars can explain where in the Constitution it says a minority of House members should be allowed to endanger the financial security of every U.S. citizen because they don’t like one of our country’s duly passed laws.
And please, this is not a case of Democrats and Republicans acting like children and refusing to come to an agreement. This may be Romper Room, but all the kids are on one side of the aisle.
Why on earth would Obama give any ground in this manufactured dispute? Doing so would establish a dreadful precedent, as anything and everything would henceforth be vulnerable to the same sort of blackmail. Next time there’s a Republican president and a Democratic House majority, I want the House to threaten to defund Reagan National Airport unless it’s renamed “Barney Frank’s Gay Love Emporium and Funhouse.” Or maybe the Dems could threaten to shut down the government until Republicans agree to raze the Washington Monument and replace it with a giant statue of Dick Cheney shooting his hunting buddy in the face. Hey, why not? Everything’s back on the table, right?
This standoff is absurd, and every sane person knows it’s a House Republican-created train wreck. Any other suggestion is pure, unvarnished nonsense. Let’s hope sanity is restored sooner rather than later.
Click here to sign up for the free IB ezine – your twice-weekly resource for local business news, analysis, voices, and the names you need to know. If you are not already a subscriber to In Business magazine, be sure to sign up for our monthly print edition here.
