July 16, 2011
Okay, the article by Michael Cooper didn’t use exactly those words, but it did say that:
“Governors from around the country — including Christine O. Gregoire of Washington, a Democrat, and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican — said that employers in their states had been reluctant to hire new workers because of the uncertainty [over the debt ceiling].”
If there are employers who are seeing enough demand for labor that they would ordinarily be hiring new workers, but are not doing so because of uncertainty stemming from the debt ceiling, then we would expect that they are working their existing workforce additional hours. This one is easy to check.
Here’s what average weekly hours looks like according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
See the jump in hours due to the uncertainty? That’s right, it’s not there. This means Governors Gregoire and Walker and the rest either do not have a clue about what is going in the labor markets in their state or they are making things up. This is one that readers will have to judge for themselves.
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