Those of us who live in Louisiana are constantly bombarded by press releases from Team Jindal about all the jobs that Bobby Jindal has created since he has been in office.
First, government (the Jindal Administration) doesn’t create jobs; the private sector does. Even government jobs are created by the tax dollars of the private sector.
Second, if one totaled up all the press release numbers, one would conclude that we have more jobs than people in Louisiana. That’s exactly the impression that Jindal’s ethically-challenged economic development point person, Stephen Moret, would like us to have.
Recently, we learned the facts about jobs in Louisiana. LSU Professor Bob Mann penned a column in the Times Picayune that destroys the jobs myth of Team Jindal.
This one paragraph in Mann’s column says it all:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, when Jindal took office in January 2008, there were 1,962,000 people employed in Louisiana. Our unemployment rate was 3.8 percent. In July of 2013, there were 1,947,000 million employed Louisianans, roughly the same as when Jindal became governor. Our unemployment rate was 7 percent, more than three points higher than when Jindal took office.
In other words, while Jindal has been governor, the number of employed people in Louisiana has actually dropped by 15,000 while the number of unemployed and seeking work has doubled.
Despite the press releases and ribbon cuttings to the contrary, the jobs situation in Louisiana has been going in the wrong direction under Jindal.
Kudos to Mann for exposing the facts.
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