Verified jobs data released; more confirmation of Walker’s poor “relationship with the truth”

Amidst the media whirlwind surrounding the US Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, the verified quarterly jobs data was released today by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This data has been highly anticipated in light of Scott Walker’s politicization of it during the recall campaign. As reported on June 8 (“New documents released by DWD prove Scott Walker lied about early released jobs numbers“), the data now released by the BLS concurs with documents obtained by Badger Democracy from Wisconsin DWD – and is further proof of Scott Walker’s poor “relationship with the truth” (as Russ Feingold stated during the campaign).

Walker has been insistent in his jobs claims, especially during the election – citing this exact data (QCEW report) for gains of 23,321 jobs. The verified data shows that Scott Walker overstated the actual job growth by nearly 25%. Wisconsin only gained 19,551 jobs in 2011 – still putting us last in job growth in the US.

All data was retrieved from the BLS QCEW reports on June 28, 2012.

The data released today was very close to the data submitted to BLS by DWD earlier this year (see June 8 Badger Democracy blog for the DWD-submitted data):

QCEW 2010-2011 report:

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Annual
2010	2554758	2554127	2568348	2618084	2653196	2686827	2632995	2643127	2661328	2681100	2678957	2670014	2633572
2011	2593358	2593428	2610854	2651421	2679706	2712135	2666362	2678997	2701047	2699946	2696251	2689565	2664423

In spite of consistent job growth during 2010, the growth stagnates in May 2011, then retreats in the 4th Quarter of 2011 – the first full quarter after enactment of the Walker Budget. From October – December 2011, Wisconsin lost 10,000 jobs; losing over half its annual gains in one quarter.

Scott Walker’s press release today tried putting a positive spin on this abysmal job performance data:

“The federally published BLS jobs total for Wisconsin in December 2011 is virtually identical to the data BLS signed off on last month—a difference of 16 out of a total of almost 2.7 million jobs counted in themonth—reaffirming that Wisconsin added thousands of jobs last year.”

The first section of that statement is patently false. BLS only verified their completion of the verification process – no numbers were verified (statement from Richard Clayton, BLS Chief of QCEW data). The “…difference of 16 out of a total of almost 2.7 million jobs counted…” refers to the difference in what state DWD reported to BLS (see the June 8 blog for comparison) – not what Walker was citing as job gains. In that June 8 analysis, Badger Democracy concluded “…that (number of jobs created from 2010-2011) is only between 19,248 and 19,535.”  The DWD number reported to BLS of 19,535 was only off by 16. Walker’s claim during the campaign was off by 4,000 – nearly 25%.

Continuing with the Walker statement:

“The finalized, federal data clearly shows that Wisconsin gained thousands of jobs in 2011.  This is acomplete turnaround from the more than 100,000 jobs lost in the three years before I took office.”

Since Scott Walker won’t, let’s set the record straight. In 2008 (3 years before Walker took office), the QCEW 2007-2011 report shows Wisconsin peaked at 2.84 million employed in June. In January 2010, that number had dropped to 2.55 million employed. That, Governor, is over 250,000 jobs lost. Laura Dresser from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy has consistently stated that Wisconsin needs 250,000 jobs NOW just to get back to 2007 employment levels. The data confirm this statement.

Scott Walker intentionally overstated (even as he would have known different) the job gains from this report by nearly 4,000 – a significant difference. Had Walker cited the 19,535 number from the preliminary report, that would be an accurate statement. As it stands – his intent was to overstate and deceive.

Scott Walker has intentionally buried the fact that in the 4th Quarter of 2011, Wisconsin lost 10,000 jobs. The media have never once asked that question of the Governor.

The factual nature of this data will be ignored by the Capitol Press, mainstream media, the Walker Administration, and the GOP. The cost – Wisconsin will continue to be plagued by a long-term, persistent unemployment problem. Much of this problem is unreported as people have been unemployed too long to receive benefits, or have dropped out of the system as “discouraged.”

When over 250,000 jobs are needed to get back to 2007 levels – a gain of 19,000 jobs in one year is dismal in the context of such a long-term problem. The recent CES 2007-2012 data  shows little variance from the QCEW data; and worse for Wisconsin, confirms the pattern of stagnation in job growth. If Scott Walker had any real interest in job creation; he would stop staging ideological social warfare, and work with Democrats, Independents, and Progressives to find solutions.

Which proves – the Walker agenda has nothing to do with economic recovery, or job creation.

(For the record, the Walker administration was twice contacted for comment on this information, no response was received)

Supreme Court decision on the Obama Affordable Care Act…the bottom line

The Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act  came down within the hour. Here is the bottom line on the decision:

The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

In addition, because the law as a whole is constitutional, the requirement for insurers to include children up to the age of 25 on their parents’ health plan is upheld.

In the state Medicaid matter, should Wisconsin fall out of compliance with the new law, Wisconsin would lose new funds for those provisions, not all Medicaid funding.

A more draconian issue surrounding the rejection of the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause eventually may be interpreted as a major blow to Congress’s authority to pass social welfare laws. Using the tax code — especially in the current political environment — to promote social welfare is going to be very hazardous in the current political climate.

The analysis will continue, but as the mandate was upheld, the law as a whole is Constitutional.