Nationally, we had near zero job growth in August. Rick Perry's Texas lost 1300 jobs. So if it weren't for Rick Perry and Texas, we'd of gained 1300 jobs nationally. It's all Rick Perry's fault.
http://www.chron.com/business/economy/article/Texas-sees-first-job-decline-in-almost-a-year-2174066.php
OK, what I just said was very misleading and not fair, but I'm just trying to make a point.
Last June, we saw claims that Texas gained 32,000 jobs while only 18,000 were gained in the whole country, and that without Rick Perry and Texas, we'd of lost 14,000 jobs (as was posted on this site). So to be consistent, Rick Perry is now at fault for us only breaking even in August.
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20110722-texas-hiring-improves-with-32000-jobs-in-june.ece
Quoting jobs numbers like this is pure politics. When it works for the politician, they jump at it. When it doesn't, you hear crickets.
To illustrate, let's consider a very simplified example to show how this works...
Consider a country with just 3 states. In August, state "A" shows a gain of 10,000 jobs. State "B" shows a loss of 10,000 jobs. State "T" shows a gain of 1,000 jobs.
Nationally, that's a gain of 1,000 jobs.
After the report comes out, the governor of state "T" brags (or his pundits do) that his state gained 1,000 jobs and that is responsible for 100% of the national job growth. Of course that ignores that state "A" gained 10 times more jobs.
So can we drop these simplistic claims about what percentage of the national job growth a particular state is responsible for? And it's just not Rick Perry's Texas, other states (pundits) do it too.
