Labor Day means candidates (Rick Perry included) making job claims
Rick Perry was governor so long–more than 14 years–he could both run for re-election and bid for president by talking up the state’s economy on his watch.
On this Labor Day, we’ve got just a few samples from our checks of his job-gain claims:
- In a January 2009 press release (yep, we’re time-traveling) Perry said: “Approximately 70 percent of the jobs created in the U.S. from November 2007-2008 were in Texas.” When we opened for business in 2010, we rated this statement False. Why? Perry drew on a calculation that assumed no jobs were gained in the 36 states that had net job losses in that time period–a no-no, experts told us.
- Perry was more precise in a May 2013 ad that said: “Over the last 10 years, Texas created 33 percent of the net new jobs nationwide.” True: That conclusion was supported by comparing state-by-state job gain estimates and a separate calculation of net job gains nationally, both by the federal government. While this may have been an imperfect way to explore this facet, there didn’t appear to be better approaches.
- In a March 2010 video ad (shown above) that debuted as he stumped for re-election as governor, Perry called Texas the fastest-growing state with the most Fortune 500 companies. Half True: In 2009, Texas was home to the most Fortune 500 companies. And it gained more people than any other state from July 2008 to July 2009. But raw numbers didn’t tell the whole story. Wyoming and Utah grew faster than Texas. Texas was outpaced by other states during each of the two immediately preceding year-to-year periods as well.
- Much more recently, Perry said this June: “In the last seven years of my tenure, Texas created 1.5 million new jobs. As a matter of fact, without Texas, America would have lost 400,000 jobs.” Mostly True: Figures backed this up, though Perry cherry-picked a time period arguably giving Texas more of a gloss than it might get with other periods. Generally, we noted, no governor determines job gains or losses in a state; outside factors tend to prevail. In Texas, the fracking boom comes to mind. Governors don’t create oil and gas fields (yet).
See Rick Perry’s full Truth-O-Meter report card here (we’ve checked him more than 150 times).
Happy Labor Day week!
