
Subject: Re: What Romney shoulda said Date: 11/16/2012 2:14 PM
Recommendations: 5
And the vast majority of these jobs were created in states like Texas which have been successful precisely because they have labor and tax policies which you, Mr. Obama, oppose. And they have been created in industries like Oil and Gas production that you, Mr. Obama, have done your best to hinder. All the jobs you claim to have helped to create were actually facilitated by a philosophy of government you oppose, by regulatory policy you would overturn if you could, and in industries you would prefer did not exist. States like Texas -- with organic growth driven by private capital -- stand in stark contrast to your investments of our taxpayer money in bankrupt companies like Solyndra. If you had had your way, Mr. Obama, few of these jobs would have been created. Yes, this country saw some job creation, but it occurred despite your efforts, not because of them.

Boy, that sure sounds like it would have been an effective campaign message. And a pretty obviously effective campaign message. So perhaps there's a reason why they didn't make that argument?

Fortunately, the BLS website lets you break out employement data by state. Let's compare the same time frame that Obama used to frame 3.5 million private-sector jobs (August 2009 to most recent data), and look at the most reliably Republican states. I'll use the Cook PVI rankings to list them in order, but if you have other states, I can add them in. Here's the net change in total private sector employment - all the new private sector jobs - from August 2009 to August 2012. Since you expressly mentioned Texas, I'll list the top 13 GOP states which takes us down to there (all figures in thousands):

State Net Change - Private Sector Jobs

Utah 54.7
Wyoming 3.8
Idaho 16.3
Oklahoma 65.7
Alabama 17.2
Alaska 8.7
Nebraska 15.3
Kansas 21.8
Kentucky 65.1
Louisiana 54.5
Mississippi -0.1
North Dakota 55.3
Texas 634.6

TOTAL 1,012.9

Not bad - a million new jobs, all in rock-ribbed Republican states, with Republican governors and legislatures.

But wait - what about the most Democratic states in the country? The ones that have political philosophies shared by President Obama? How did they do for private sector job creation during that same time frame? Let's look at the ten most Democratic states:

State Net Change - Private Sector Jobs

Vermont 9.2
Hawaii 17.6
Massachusetts 105.0
Rhode Island 3.3
New York 364.9
Maryland 45.3
Illinois 120.5
California 507.7
Connecticut 24.5
Delaware 4.4

TOTAL 1,202.4

Well, suddenly that campaign message gets a little more vulnerable to counterattack. While there was certainly a lot of private job creation in Texas, there was also a lot of private job creation in Democratic bastions like California, New York, Illinois, and Massachussetts.

Given that, it's easy to see why the campaign chose to attack Obama for cherry-picking his start date and dataset (ie. beginning from the trough of employment and only looking at private-sector jobs), rather than state differences during those time frames.

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