May 31, 2016
Before the West Virginia primary, former Secretary of States Hillary Clinton made a comment about how environmental regulations would lead to a loss of jobs in coal mining. The comment was in the context of a commitment to retraining miners and providing aid to hard-hit communities, but her critics have seized on it to say that she wants to get rid of coal mining jobs.
Emma Roller picked up on this theme in a NYT column on how the presidential election will affect candidates lower down on the ticket. Roller quotes Andrea Bozek, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee:
“‘Her [Clinton’s] comments on coal are going to really hurt Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania and Ted Strickland in Ohio,’ she said. ‘That’s a huge issue for voters in those states, and I think you’re going to see a lot of TV ads this summer and fall tying Hillary Clinton’s comments — not only on coal, but on her national security record, economic record — to these candidates as well.'”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Ohio has a labor force of just under 5.6 million. It has 11,600 jobs in the category logging and mining. This means that just over 0.2 percent of Ohio’s workforce would be employed in coal mining if all of the jobs in this category were coal mining. Since the state probably has some jobs in logging and in other types of mining, coal mining would have to be a smaller share of the total workforce.
Pennsylvania has 6,000 people employed in coal mining with a total workforce of 5.9 million. This means that the coal industry accounts for just over 0.1 percent of total employment in Pennsylvania.
It seems questionable that comments relating to an industry that employees between 0.1–0.2 percent of a state’s workforce are likely to have much impact on the outcome of an election.
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