August 13, 2011
Sorry, folks I made a very bad mistake on this one. (Lesson: always double-check your commands in an Excel spreadsheet.) It turns out that Texas maintained and actually increased the gap between its rate of job growth and the rest of the country during the Perry years.
Over the years from 1987 to 2001, annual job growth in Texas averaged 2.8 percent. This is 0.8 percentage points higher than the growth rate for the economy as a whole. In the ten years since Governor Perry took office job growth has averaged just over 1.0 percent annually, during a period in which employment in the country as a whole actually shrank slightly. This makes the gap in the Perry years just under 1.1 percent. This means that, at least by the measure of job growth, Perry does have something to show in Texas.
(If you’re looking for me, I’m the guy wearing a paper bag over his head. Thanks to Sam123 for prompting me to recheck my numbers.)
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics and author’s calculations.
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