Jobs miracle?
[The] Texas unemployment rate increased to 8.5% in August -- the highest level in more than 24 years and more than twice the rate when Perry took office in December 2000.
Here's what it means in terms of actual jobs and unemployment over the last couple of months:
This is the
second month in a row of a Texas jobs fizzle, but Perryland says it's no big deal:
"Texas is not immune to the effects of the national recession," said Ray Sullivan, Perry's chief spokesman. "Yet Texas continues to outperform the rest of the country."
Yet if you take a look at the numbers at the top of this post, Texas actually has underperformed of late. In fact, if it weren't for Texas, job growth in America would been nearly 50 percent higher over the past two months. But Rick Perry is still convinced he's witnessed a miracle in Texas.
And before Mitt Romney gets too excited about what these numbers mean for him, he should remember that he's spent much of the last two debates saying he'd like to make the rest of America's economy more like that of Texas.