January 31, 2012
That should have been the headline to the NYT story on Florida governor Rick Scott, if they got their facts right. While it is common for politicians to make big promises and not come through, the NYT reports that Rick Scott is not expecting to even get Florida back to its pre-recession level of employment after 7 years in office.
According to the according to the article, Scott promised to create 700,000 jobs after 7 years in office. If Florida follows this path, it will have 7,862,000 jobs in January of 2018, more than 200,000 less than its pre-recession peak of 8,071,000 jobs in March of 2007. If Florida actually has 2.5 percent fewer jobs in 2018 than it did in 2007, then it is likely to rank near or at the bottom among states in job creation.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Instead of calling readers to attention to the meekness of the governor’s promise, it effectively did a PR pitch for his performance, telling readers:
“And he has started to deliver. In the past year, more than 100,000 private-sector jobs have been created, and the state ranks third in job growth behind California and Texas, according to the latest Labor Department data.”
Of course it should not be terribly surprising that Florida ranks third in job growth, since it is the fourth largest state in population, less than 3 percent behind third place New York.
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