Perry Exaggerating His Role In Texas' Growth, Say Progressives

By Gabrielle Pffaflin

Unemployment and migratory data indicate that Texas Governor and GOP Presidential hopeful Rick Perry has exaggerated his role in helping grow Texas’ economy. The data suggests that migration, rising oil prices and municipal governments played significantly greater roles in allowing the state to boast moderate unemployment rates.

The Center for American Progress’ left-leaning blog, Thinkprogress.org, published a report August 17, 2011 entitled Report: Texas Ranks Dead Last In Total Job Creation, Accounting For Labor Force Growth outlining job growth and population growth.

The report states that in the past two and a half years 126,000 jobs were created in Texas. However, the Texas workforce also grew by 437,000 individuals. CAP senior economist and expert in state policies Donna Cooper remarked that the migratory increase likely derived from a low cost-of-living, warm weather and a stable housing market.

Cooper attributed the bulk of Texas’ growth to increasing immigration to the Lone Star State. “I think the biggest thing that contributed to Texas growth is the increase in population in Texas over the last several years,” she told TRNS.

Although the Texas economy grew substantially during the course of the recession, the data indicates that job growth remains disproportionate to population growth. As a result, Texas’ unemployment will likely increase as immigration from Mexico and surrounding U.S. states increases.

“Overall, Texas has added unemployed workers at a rate much faster than it has created jobs,” the report stated. According to the report, rather than Texas, the real “miracle” state is North Dakota, “which has seen over 27,000 new jobs added and a labor force expansion of only 3,700, resulting in about 24,000 new jobs for workers who previously had none.”

According to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics, growth in the Lone Star State is limited to select communities.

It concluded that in June 2011, the primary communities to experience substantial growth and low unemployment remained oil producing communities in North Texas, such as Abilene, Odessa and Midland.

Communities that resided near colleges and major thoroughfares also exhibited growth, however not to the extent of oil and gas producing municipalities.

According to Cooper, this phenomenon primarily results from significant technological improvements in oil extraction that inclines companies to reuse previously closed wells.

Istockanalyst.com published an article called Fortune Oil And Gas Re-opens Shut-in Wells In Texas on July 29 of this year, which announced the re-opening of 37 previously shut-in wells by the end of this month.

However, the article does not directly link oil companies’ decision to re-open wells to Perry’s deregulation policies.

“I don’t necessarily think that the business regulation climate has tons to do with the growth of employment in Texas,” Cooper said. “You also have to [concede] simply to the fact that it is a state that has a lot of oil.”

Cooper added that it is substantially less expensive for companies to reopen closed wells than to drill new wells because, “the infrastructure is already there.”

“I cannot say with certainty that Rick Perry’s administration is responsible for job growth or not,” she concluded. “What I can say is it’s very difficult for a governor to affect their own job numbers. Job numbers are a function of large macroeconomic trends that are much more dependent on federal policies than they are on state and local policies.”

Using that logic, it would be fair to argue that President Obama is more responsible for the nation’s overall high unemployment rate then Perry is for his state’s relatively lower rate. This, of course, then begs the question, which of the two men has the upper hand when it comes to creating jobs?

Editor Geoff Holtzman contributed to this report.