Posted on 04/01/2004 11:17:13 AM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- West Virginia has lost more than 23,000 jobs since President Bush took office with the help of the state's five electoral votes, labor statistics show.
That doesn't include the more than 21,000 people who have left the state's labor force since the January 2001 start of the Bush administration.
Bush planned to talk about the economy and job creation during his Friday visit to Huntington. His critics hope to set the tone on those issues and reverse his fortunes in the Mountain State.
Bush's supporters believe the blame is misplaced.
"The problem with job loss is due to the one-party rule and state government in Charleston, not with this president," state Republican Chairman Kris Warner said Thursday. "We're losing our jobs to Tennessee and Virginia, not Mexico and India."
West Virginia is emerging as a battleground in the presidential race. Bush won the state in 2000 despite West Virginia's 2-to-1 Democratic majority. It was the first Mountain State victory for a non-incumbent Republican presidential candidate in more than 70 years.
Recent polls in West Virginia, Florida and Pennsylvania show the race between Bush and Democratic candidate John Kerry virtually tied. West Virginia is among 17 states targeted by the campaigns for their most intensive advertising.
Federal labor statistics show job-loss trends nationally that in many cases parallel West Virginia's, particularly in goods-producing industries. In other cases, such as manufacturing, the decline has been less severe in West Virginia.
The state Bureau of Employment Programs counted 736,500 working West Virginians in February, the latest available figures. That's a drop from 759,900 employed when Bush took office. The overall labor force, meanwhile, shrank from 808,500 to 787,100 people.
Of those lost jobs, 12,300 were in the higher-wage, goods-producing sector. The coal industry, heavily courted by Bush in 2000, has lost 1,400 jobs. Manufacturing lost 10,200.
About 1,400 factory and mill jobs have disappeared since Bush's last West Virginia visit, a February meeting with congressional Republicans at The Greenbrier resort.
"Bush has had ample enough time to correct the problem, and he hasn't," said Ron Ferrell, a retired union steelworker from Huntington who took part in a Thursday jobs rally in South Charleston. "We're in worse shape than what he's telling people."
West Virginia's economy has continued its shift from producing goods to providing services under Bush's watch. The service sector has seen a net gain of 3,800 jobs during this time. Retail trade jobs fell by 5,700, however. Service sector gains included 4,300 jobs in the leisure and hospitality industries and 6,000 jobs in education and health care-related fields.
"What the future holds is more of the same. The goods-producing sectors are going to continue to be under intense competitive pressure," said George Hammond, director of the West Virginia Economic Outlook Project at West Virginia University.
Aided by the decline in the overall labor force, West Virginia's unemployment rate was a half-percent higher in February than it was when Bush took office. But a state Bureau of Employment Programs study released in February shows that out-of-work West Virginians are languishing longer without a job.
About 57 percent of workers unemployed in 2000 remained jobless for five or more weeks. By last year, nearly two-thirds of the unemployed remained jobless for that long. Nearly one-fourth of these workers, about 11,000 West Virginians, were unemployed for 15 or more weeks.
When asked about the state's job losses, a Bush campaign spokesman invoked the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"If you look at what happened to the economy after 9-11, the president took very bold action," spokesman Kevin Madden said.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that national job-loss trends in such areas as mining, manufacturing and retail sales began before the attacks.
Madden said Bush is helping West Virginia with tax cuts and deregulation.
"I think the president has showed confident, steadied and principled leadership on the economy," Madden said. "This president is committed every single day to growing the economy and creating more jobs."
Nope.
I'm trying to help the Administration defeat Kerry by getting them to abandon the policies that have "loser" written all over them.
Unfortunately, the Administration isn't listening to me.
It's kind of sad that they keep insisting on shooting themselves in the foot.
"It's the economy, stupid."
Sound familiar???
There's a good reason why it should.
Yep. Manufacturing stats are distorted by business taking full credit for final product despite offshoring actual production.
GDP suffers from the record high Trade Deficits that are SUBTRACTED from the calculation.
And the employment stats fail to reflect those discourage workers who have dropped out of the workforce, and the millions of Americans who have had to accept lower compensated occupations in the service sector. The euphemism that the eggheads are using is "wage compression".
The horrific terrorist acts of 9/11 were certainly a dramatic display of destruction.
But as far as actual, unemotional dollar-damage to the physical infrastructure, I think you'll find the event dwarfed by major natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.
"The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed... "
--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785. ME 19:18, Papers 8:682
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