This week Gov. McCrory released a video claiming credit for a drop in North Carolina’s unemployment rate to 8 percent, down from June’s 8.8 percent, citing “difficult decisions” that “had to be made” to bring prosperity to the state. Ironically, at about the same time GuvPat was wrapping up his message to North Carolina citizens, the money and politics blogger for an influential conservative think tank was essentially saying that McCrory is full of it. James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute looked into our wise leaders’ decision to reduce unemployment insurance this year, and found that it did nothing to curb the unemployment rate.
The lawmakers and McCrory reduced the maximum payout by a third, and cut the number of weeks residents can get unemployment payments. The cuts automatically made the state ineligible for the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which provides extended benefits that are set to expire at the end of the year. Pethokoukis notes the Republican claims that the cuts made lazy-ass out-of-work North Carolinians get off their butts and look for a damn job (not precisely their words), which is why the state’s unemployment rate dropped to 8 percent. Pethokoukis then goes on to destroy that argument by simply citing facts.
You can check out the AEI link for full details, but the takeaway is “it looks like the cut in unemployment benefits moved people out of the labor force rather than into employment,” with the actual rate of employed North Carolinians decreasing a bit. In addition – and this hits at the core of the GOP’s bogus claims – if the state’s labor force participation rate had remained the same as it was in June, N.C.’s unemployment rate would have actually increased to 9.1 percent. AEI goes on to note that Bloomberg News has noticed the same results.
So, along with talking with protesters, reducing taxes for you and me as much as he reduced them for the rich, and fixing the state’s supposedly “broken” Medicaid program, we now have one more lie to add to Gov. Pinocchio’s roster. Merry Christmas.
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2013.
Pat has but one thing in mind. How can I S–REW the poor even more, and give the rich more money.
As usual Grooms filters this story through his beady little partisan eyes. While he is to be commended for bringing up Labor Force Participation Rate, and how a falling LFPR distorts the base “U-3” unemployment figure, he conveniently leaves out the fact that the nationwide LFPR is at its lowest point since 1978.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/06/news/economy/labor-force-participation/
So the NC story is only 1/50th, or 2% of the picture. And if McCrory is responsible for the NC economy, then it follows that BHO (who has been in his office far longer than Gov. Fratboy) owns the national employment picture.
So, McCrory is using the same formula for figuring unemployment in NC as Obama has been using to figure out the national figures.
McCrory is sleezy and nasty for doing so.
Obama is our brilliant savior.