Question for our Tea-Publican legislature and governor: Where are the jobs?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Our Tea-Publican legislature and governor are committed to their faith based supply-side "trickle down" economics orthodoxy. Their slash and burn budget cuts to education and health care they told us would magically create jobs. Their corporate welfare tax bailout plan for corporations would magically create jobs.

Question for our Tea-Publican legislature and governor: Where are the jobs? There is no empirical evidence to support their cult-like faith in supply-side magic. Arizona job growth lagging forecast:

The number of jobs in Arizona is only infinitesimally larger than it was a year ago, and the pace of hiring doesn't look as if it will pick up much in the second half of 2011.

Economists who had predicted in the spring that the state would add as much as 2 percent more jobs this year, or about 25,000 openings, have been ratcheting down their forecasts. The same analysts now are expecting only 10,000 to 12,000, according to Lee McPheters, an Arizona State University economist.

In June, Arizona had 2.35 million jobs, only about 4,900 more than it had on June 30, 2010, McPheters calculates. That's a growth rate of 0.2 percent – virtually flat.

Government cutbacks caused by budget revenue deficits appear to be a main drag on job growth.

While the private sector added 21,300 jobs in June compared with a year earlier, government jobs fell by 14,000 in the same period, according to the Arizona Department of Administration, the state agency that has taken over the monthly employment reports from the former Commerce Department. The drop in government jobs includes the loss of census positions since last year.

This is the point that Steve Benen makes each month in the employment numbers I post each month. Political Animal – Private-sector job creation deteriorating, too:

Overall, the U.S. economy added a terrible 18,000 jobs in June, but as has been the case for a long while, there was a major gap between the public and private sectors. Businesses added 57,000 jobs in May, while 39,000 jobs were lost in the public sector at the same time, thanks to budget cuts at the state and local level.

Those are, by the way, budget cuts Republicans are desperate to bring to the federal level.

The new numbers are the weakest in over a year, and further evidence that the economy is in desperate need of a boost. It can’t get that boost, of course, because congressional Republicans refuse to consider anything other than austerity measures, which necessarily make unemployment worse.

Arizona's unemployment rate rose slightly in June, to 9.3 percent, compared with 9.1 percent in May, in the latest state employment report released Thursday. The rate had fallen from March through May but now has bounced back to its April level.

Traditionally, the jobless rate has risen after a recession as more people look for work, but McPheters said that doesn't appear to be happening this time. The number of people seeking jobs in Arizona has fallen by 6,700 from June 2010 to June 2011. The unemployment rate is rising, he believes, because not enough jobs are being created.

"Unemployment is going to stay at a high level until the Arizona economy starts creating more than a few thousand jobs," he said.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell asks the same question based upon the Arizona Republic report above in this press release:

House Minority Leader to GOP Governor and Lawmakers: Where are the jobs

STATE CAPITOL, PHOENIX – As the media reported today that job growth in Arizona has not materialized in the past year, state House Minority Leader Chad Campbell asked the Governor and his Republican colleagues: Where are the jobs?

A whole slew of bills went in to effect this week and none of them create jobs for Arizonans,” said Campbell.

The one bill Republicans could have passed to help families looking for work, they bungled,” Campbell said of the failed attempt to pass legislation to extend emergency unemployment benefits in a special session a few weeks ago.

“Continuing unemployment checks for people out of work would have been an immediate shot-in-the-arm of $3.5 million in federal funds per week. That is tangible. That would have stimulated economic activity and jobs in this state,” Campbell said. “But Arizona’s economic rebound is being held hostage by ideologues more interested in picking a fight with the federal government than helping Arizona’s workers.”

According to the Department of Economic Security (DES), 14,000 people lost weekly, emergency unemployment checks on June 11 when the legislature failed to pass legislation to continue providing federally-funded benefits to qualifying individuals for an additional 20 weeks. Between June 11 and July 1, DES reports more than 3,000 people have also lost benefits and even more have seen payments stop since then as each week, a new group of unemployed persons loses eligibility.

“The Republican formula of sticking it to middle-class families while giving tax breaks to special interests does not equal economic rebound,” Campbell said. “Where are the jobs? Republicans control all of state government. When are they going to deliver on their promises?”

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UPDATE: A boom in corporate profits, a bust in jobs, wages:

"I've never seen labor markets this weak in 35 years of research," says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

Wages and salaries accounted for just 1 percent of economic growth in the first 18 months after economists declared that the recession had ended in June 2009, according to Sum and other Northeastern researchers.

In the same period after the 2001 recession, wages and salaries accounted for 15 percent. They were 50 percent after the 1991-92 recession and 25 percent after the 1981-82 recession.

Corporate profits, by contrast, accounted for an unprecedented 88 percent of economic growth during those first 18 months. That's compared with 53 percent after the 2001 recession, nothing after the 1991-92 recession and 28 percent after the 1981-82 recession.

What's behind the disconnect between strong corporate profits and a weak labor market? Several factors:

* U.S. corporations are expanding overseas, not so much at home. McDonalds and Caterpillar said overseas sales growth outperformed the U.S. in the April-June quarter. U.S.-based multinational companies have been focused overseas for years: In the 2000s, they added 2.4 million jobs in foreign countries and cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States, according to the Commerce Department.

* Back in the U.S., companies are squeezing more productivity out of staffs thinned out by layoffs during Great Recession. They don't need to hire. And they don't need to be generous with pay raises; they know their employees have nowhere else to go.

* Companies remain reluctant to spend the $1.9 trillion in cash they've accumulated, especially in the United States. They're unconvinced that consumers are ready to spend again with the vigor they showed before the recession, and they are worried about uncertainty in U.S. government policies.

And the Tea-Publican answer is to give corporations even more of our money in the hope that in their magnificent benevolence our corporate overlords will "trickle-down" some of their largess to us peasants.