The Gov. likes to brag about how many private sector jobs he has created during his tenure. He boasts that the government doesn’t create any jobs. He even has said that the government can actually run jobs away.
The Wall Street Journal, owned by Richard Murdoch of Fox News and which is not known in right wing circles as a liberal attack dog, reported that public sector jobs have grown at a much higher rate under Perry’s watch than private sector jobs. The Journal reports that the Lone Star State gained more than a million jobs since the end of 2000, while the U.S. has lost almost 1.5 million, according data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
About 300,000 of the new Texas jobs were in government. More than half of them were a result of population growth.were at public schools. Employment in the state’s public sector has jumped 19% since 2000, compared with a 9% rise in the private sector.
The Austin American-Statesman has reported that “While the national unemployment rate is 9.1 percent and the Texas unemployment rate is 8 percent, and 23 states, including New York, have lower unemployment rates.†Between 2008 and 2010, jobs actually grew at a faster pace in Massachusetts than in Texas. Texas has also done worse than the rest of the country since the peak of national unemployment in October 2009.â€
One not so notable statistic though is that Texas leads the nation in the highest percentage of minimum wage jobs.