Lil White Lies: Take These Net Jobs and Shove 'em

Jobs statistics are a sticky, complex topic for PolitiFact: as noted by PolitiFact Ohio writer Mark Naymik in this recent PolitiFact (PF) ruling on Joe Biden: “Politifact also frequently points [out] that when framing job figures, slicing and timing make all the difference.”

And wouldn’t you know, PF even knows quite well what selection bias is. Only it calls it for what it really is: cherry picking: (emphasis added)

Take, for example, some other accurate statistics we can create using the same figures.

If job growth continues on pace in 2010, employment still will have decreased by 1.6 million jobs since Obama took office in 2009.

While Obama is on a pace to add 2.356 million jobs in 2010, Bush created 2.36 million jobs in 2005 (a specific year to year comparison).

And from April 2003 to June 2007, while Bush was president, the U.S. economy added almost 7.9 million jobs.

All true. And all in seeming contradiction to Wasserman Schultz's claim.

Why?

Because we cherry-picked numbers to make our point.

But the ruling that is the subject of this Lil White Lies post is not about Joe Biden or Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  It's about a claim by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell about Texas Governor Rick Perry's "job creation performance" in an op-ed piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

My conservative counterpart is correct in how PolitiFact approaches job numbers claims: “PolitiFact's history of (appropriately) treating job creation claims as dealing with net job creation where the context warrants taking them that way.” So, in that same track, is he also correct when he says that PolitiFact failed to note that Rick Perry “did not mention the term "net" while talking about job gains?

Here is the complete quote from McDonnell:

Look no further than growing and diverse Texas, a state Democrats targeted in 2010, where data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that under Gov. Rick Perry’s leadership the state has created more jobs over the last decade than the rest of the states combined. That’s a record of job creation the Obama administration can only dream about.

There is no mention of this “net” by McDonnell throughout his op-ed piece extolling the great things all the new Republican governors have been doing for their states. For example, he says about his own, Virginia: “Since February 2010, 67,400 new jobs have been created in Virginia and our unemployment rate has fallen to 6% from 7.2%.” He says about Wisconsin: “In six months, 25,000 private-sector jobs have been created.”

Writer Jacob Geiger says at the end that McDonnell used net job numbers. As McDonnell wrote that he used BLS data, the conclusion is he took beginning BLS employment numbers for Texas and subtracted the ending employment numbers for the decade Rick Perry was governor—which is netting the numbers. Geiger’s point on “net” was explained thus: (emphasis added)

According to the BLS, Texas had a net gain of 907,000 jobs between December 2000 and December 2010. The entire payroll in the U.S. grew by 1.6 million jobs during the span.

That means of the 19 states that gained jobs during the first decade of Perry’s governorship, including the District of Columbia, Texas accounted for 56 percent of the gain.

But McDonnell did not say it that way. He wrote that Texas "has created more jobs over the last decade than the rest of the states combined." The statistics he cites ignore any positions created in the 31 states where job losses outnumbered gains over that time, and it also fails to capture all positions added in states with job gains.

I can see why that statement can't stand. Geiger used the example of California. If it created 340,000 jobs but lost 500,000 and if New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, three populated states, collectively created 660,000 jobs while having losses of 700,000 jobs, that’s still 1 million jobs (340,000+660,000) created between California, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which exceeds those created by Texas. This example is exaggerated, of course, but you can understand what Geiger was trying to convey. PolitiFact has looked at this same factor in similar job creation rulings.  So I’m understanding the “net” to be the subtraction of beginning and ending BLS employment figures for the time period that McDonnell specified.

Net job gains/losses in number of jobs is a misleading measure in and of itself. The better measure, when comparing state to state, is the unemployment percentage. McDonnell doesn’t use that in the case of Texas in his op-ed article; he does use it for his own state, Virginia, saying it has dropped from 7.2% to 6.0%. But for Texas and Wisconsin, he simply goes by BLS data “time period net.” For Florida, he is even more vague, saying the unemployment rate has dropped every month since the governor took office. I guess that’s because it’s gone from 12.0% to 10.6%, which isn’t much to brag about.

Texas’ unemployment rate, by the way, ranks in the middle as compared to the rest of the country, at 8.0%, which is still fairly high, when you consider all those jobs it created. And Texas still has almost one million unemployed. The other matter about Texas is the jobs themselves: Texas is Number 1 in the U.S. for percent of jobs that do not have a health insurance benefit, and also Number 1 in number of jobs at minimum wage. Of course, my conservative counterpart would call that a “straw man” but you get the picture. Lots of jobs….bad jobs.

Black line marks "Perry as Governor" start point.  Note highlighted steep increase when 2008 recession hit.
Also note that since 1991 it has closely mimicked the National unemployment rate.

Bryan White may have a point about the use of net job numbers, and how PolitiFact writers go about discerning what it is the speaker is talking about when it comes to job numbers. But to say “PolitiFact applies an uncharitable interpretation to job creation statements from governors McDonnell and Perry with no apparent justification from the context” is misleading. McDonnell’s own op-ed article cherry-picked job statistics, deliberately clouding the issue of job creation by governors. His admission of using BLS data was the “context” that gave writer Geiger his “apparent justification” to net out the total employment numbers for Perry’s ten-year governance time period, which is the “net” which he gives at the end of the article.

And that's not hazy, that's lickin' chicken!