by riddle

While the Secessionist continues to pimp Texas’ supposed economic success while conservative rags like the Wall Street Journal serve as his Amen Chorus, other outlets are catching on.

The Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial last Friday touted “The Lone Star Jobs Surge” and reported, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers via the Dallas Federal Reserve, that “37% of all net new American jobs since the recovery began were created in Texas.” Texas has created 265,000 “net new jobs” since the recession ended in June 2009 through April 2011, the Journal reported.

Texas’ unemployment rate tells a different story. It has gone up from 7.7% to 8.0% over that same period. And by that measure, Texas has done worse than the rest of the country since the peak of national unemployment in October 2009: that month the U.S. rate was 10.1% and Texas was 8.2%. Texas peaked at 8.3% last December, dropping to 8.0% in April, while the national rate has dropped a point since it’s peak to 9.1%

Moreover, a Harvard Business School study commissioned by the governor found that the overall effect of these new jobs, many of which have been created by the Secessionist’s controversial tax credits, is fleeting.

…Texas’ overall prosperity growth, as measured by per capita GDP, was eighth slowest in the country from 1998 to 2008. … tax credit funds used to lure jobs to one state from another state, often “ultimately don’t support long-term prosperity,” because companies that can move easily “are looking for the best deal and when the deal runs out they move,” taking their jobs with them.

But wait, there’s more. Just what are these jobs that the Secessionist is creating?

In 2010, about 550,000 Texans were working at or below minimum wage, or about 9.5 percent of all workers paid by the hour in the state. Texas tied with Mississippi for the greatest percentage of minimum wage workers, while California had among the fewest (less than 2 percent).

[...]

From 2007 to 2010, the number of minimum wage workers in Texas rose from 221,000 to 550,000, an increase of nearly 150 percent.

So the Secessionist is very good at “producing” minimum wage jobs for his right-wing cronies, which as TIME notes, haven’t “increased the state’s overall prosperity” — and as our unemployment rate shows, don’t last.

As they say here in Texas, all hat and no cattle.