When asked as to why Texas has such a tremendous record of economic growth during the last 32 months as compared to the rest of the country, which is quite frankly not worthy of an incumbent President winning reelection by relying on that record, she offered up the following response. (Obama’s own people have admitted that in order to win reelection, they are going to have to make him look good in comparison to the competition. In other words, they are going to go negative, and paint the GOP nominee as an idiot kook. When have we ever seen that before? Let’s see, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43, McCain, to name a few.)
One of the things that strikes me as odd about the answer, before any other discussions, is that our labor Secretary has not bothered to familiarize herself in any way with the circumstances that are driving the success in the only successful state in the nation. (Texas is the only successful state with respect to job growth anyhow. I am not intending to disparage any other state, merely to point out that the job market is in much better shape in Texas than it is in all of the remaining 49.) I would think that a Labor Secretary, the person who was in charge of getting America back to work, would at least familiarize herself with the only successful template in the nation, so that she could then attempt to replicate that success in other states. There are only two possible explanations for Solis’ professed ignorance of the reason for success in the second most populated state in the country. Either she is a partisan hack who is politicizing her position, or she is the single most incompetent person to have held that job, which is in itself astounding, considering that the position’s alumni includes Robert B. Reich.
Then Solis moved quickly through the tired old canard, everyone in Texas is in fact working for low pay. This is something which has been debunked many times over the last couple of months, but here we go again. As it turns out, Secretary Solis is just factually wrong on this point. Texas actually enjoys one of the highest median household incomes when cost of living factors are considered. The people in Texas actually enjoy a higher standard of living than most of the country.
Here are some facts: On August 17 2011, Richard Fisher, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, gave a speech in which he separated “fact from fiction” about the record of job creation in Texas. Following are some excerpts from his speech:
Texas Job Growth is Indisputable: “These are the facts. You may select whichever metric you wish. Regardless, it is reasonable to assume Texas has accounted for a significant amount of the nation’s employment growth both over the past 20 years and since the recession officially ended.”
Most new jobs are unrelated to the oil and gas sector: “The most jobs have been created in the educational and health services sector, which accounts for 13.5 percent of Texas’ employment. The second-most jobs have been created in the professional and business services sector, which accounts for 12.5 percent of the Texas workforce. The mining sector, which includes support activities for both mining and oil and gas, employs 2.1 percent (yes, two-point-one percent) of Texas’ workers.”
Most New Jobs Pay Good Wages: “…these jobs are not low-paying jobs. The average weekly wage in the education and health services sector is $790; in the professional and business services sector it is $1,117; and in the mining sector, the average weekly wage is $2,271. Together these three sectors account for 68 percent of the jobs that have been created in Texas in the past two years.” Here is a link to Mr. Fisher’s full speech.
Mr. Fisher quotes weekly wages for the 68% of jobs created. Annualizing $790/week is $41,080, $1,117/wk is $58,084, and $2,271/wk is $118,092 when annualized. Hardly “low wages.”
You can check out the actual data for yourself at Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), (the source of the statistics quoted by Mr. Fisher). Be aware that dataset is massive, but it downloads your selected groups into Excel files that can be “sliced and diced” in many different ways.
If Texas has only been creating only low wage jobs, please explain how the statewide median income is still $48,259? A “building & grounds maintenance” person in the Dallas area earns a median annual income of $20,530 and a “food prep and serving” employee earns a median income of only $17,900, not counting tips (both figures from BLS). The massive number of low paying jobs must really be pulling down the Texas median income. Imagine what the $48,259 would be if not for the thousands of “poorly paid individuals.”Having a job is only one part of the Texas quality-of-life equation – the other significant part is Texas’ low cost of living. The Cost of Living (COL) index takes into account prices on a variety of basic goods and services, including housing, groceries, utilities, healthcare, and transportation, as well as nonessential expenses like movie tickets and newspapers. These disparate costs of living can mean that a salary in one city has a far different value than the same amount of money in another city.
While it is true that Texas median household income ($48,259) is less than some states like California, New York, and Connecticut, the state does fare well when the income is adjusted by the Cost of Living (COL). When the COL is factored in, Texas’ median household income ($53,009) exceeds California by $8,550, exceeds New York’s by $10,403, and Connecticut’s by $1,532. These are 2009 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau reported in a U.S. News article. Note that those figures are based on median income (a midpoint, with as many above as below).
Here is a direct comparison illustrating how much the cost of living affects one’s standard of living. Let’s look at two cities, Los Angeles and Dallas. When Dallas is compared to L.A., here is the result: “The cost of living in Dallas is lower than the cost of living in Los Angeles. If you make $100,000.00 in Los Angeles and move to Dallas, you will only need to make $62,862.55 ($37,137.45 less) to maintain the same buying power.” The comparison is from Inflation Data.com where you can compare two selected cities against one another.
And here’s another objective, authoritative comparison:
Texas is ranked third among “Best States to make a living.” The ranking is based on an Adjusted Average Income value which considers taxes, housing, and cost of living. Texas’ average is$41,427. Compared to Massachusetts: $38,665, Minnesota: $37,721, and California: $29,772 just to compare a few. This from CBS MoneyWatch, April, 2011.
And here is another interesting tidbit, Texas places two metro areas, Houston ($60,634) and Dallas ($59,217) among the top ten metro areas in the nation with the highest real income. Real income is the median household income adjusted by the COL. Compare those figures with a couple of other large metro areas from the bottom ten: New York ($35,370) and Los Angeles ($41,331). The figures are from a June, 2011 analysis by the U.S. News using latest available (2009) data.
And what about wages? Texas has seen wages climb faster than the country overall. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average wage for employees in Texas rose 7.4% between May 2008 and May 2010 (the latest data available). For the nation as a whole, average wages climbed only 5%. This from Investors.com.
Finally, here is a new link, just added due to its excellent analysis of Texas jobs and unemployment. It is an excellent read that digs into the correlation between unemployment, job growth, and people moving to Texas. It’s called “Political Math.”
So, contrary to the poverty implied by the original criticism, the standard of living in Texas isn’t as bad as the “low paying” statement (if true) would indicate – the accusation is just an another attempt to diminish the job creation achievement, Texas’ standard of living, and by association, Governor Perry. And don’t worry, all of us “po’ folks” in Texas will manage.
Next, Solis jumped into the practice of heart string tugging. It seems like they are dying off in dangerous sweat shops down there in Texas, or that’s what she heard, since she admittedly has not bothered to check for herself. They held some sort of political rally to educate the Texas citizens on how to protest against the various grievances which will be fabricated in the future, and were amazed that about a thousand or so of the Democrat’s most ardent thugs actually showed up for the indoctrination. Before we jump into the Solis fantasy however, let’s look at some actual facts. The first chart is a graph of workplace deaths by year, starting when Ann Richards, the last Democrat to be Governor of Texas was in that office, and running through the last year for which such statistics are available. While any death is tragic, the record of Governor Perry hardly resembles an epidemic as compared to his predecessors. As a matter of fact, he has, according to this graph anyhow, actually managed to improve the safety conditions of the workplaces in Texas.
I think a deeper look into this charge is in order. Let’s look at some hard data from OSHA, who as luck would have it, actually keeps statistics on this sort of thing. What we see, from looking at the OSHA records of all 50 states, in terms of percentages of accidents per numbers of jobs held, is that Texas is a veritable model of safety for the rest of the country to follow. Solis, in her keen and probing analysis of the only success story of the nation from a jobs stand point has managed to get nothing right. But do not despair, she is planning to correct that soon enough. No silly, she’s not going to do any research to verify her analysis so that she can replicate the success story in other states, she is going to increase the regulatory efforts in Texas so that by the time the Presidential Election rolls around, Texas won’t have a good record anymore. Solis’s statement will be placed on the Campaign Tool Chest Page, so that we will have a reference point documented for the election of 2012. This is one of the highly educated geniuses which we are being told is the brightest and best America has to offer. I’ll take Perry’s common sense any day. I would much rather be working with a lowly Texas A&M graduate in the White House, than starving with a Harvard educated genius at the helm. But then, I like eating fatty meats in air conditioning, rather than in the 7th century too, call me crazy.
