The numbers cited sure look impressive, but a closer look tells a slightly different story, and even in comparison to the rest of the economy, it’s far from impressive.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall nonfarm employment in April of 2009 in Texas stood at roughly 10,343,000 Texans employed. Two years later in April of 2011, that number increased to 10,554,000, for an increase of just 2%. Unemployment in the state in April 2009 stood at 7.2%. The current unemployment rate has risen to 8%.
Even more damning, though, are the wage figures. As noted by a story in The American Independent, the figures are not adjusted for the differences in the cost of living, so there is some leeway in the interpretation, but still the facts are not in Texas’ favor: The average wage in Texas in December of 2007 was $790 per week, or $41,000 per year. California, in comparison, had an average weekly wage of $850 or $45,000 per year. The national average at the time was $750 and $39,000, respectively.
Fast forward to today and in Texas nothing has changed. Average wages are $790 and $41,000, equal to the current national average. In California the average wage has risen to $930 and $48,000.
Even worse, according to The American Independent story, in 2010 550,000 workers in Texas were working at jobs that paid at or below the minimum wage, or 9.5% of the state’s hourly workforce, tying them with Mississippi for the largest percentage of minimum wage workers in the U.S. In California the minimum wage workforce tallied in at less than 2%.
Since what economists dubbed the end of the recession in 2009, California has seen its average wage increase by 9.3%, as opposed to a 0.6% increase in Texas. From 2007 to present, Texas saw a 150% increase in the minimum wage workforce, and 16% since 2010.
Massive budget problems
Despite all of this alleged growth and expansion of jobs and the Texas economy, the state is still facing massive budget shortfalls. Sure, they tout a “balanced budget,” but they relied on parlor tricks and a lot of help to get there.
Recall that in 2009 Rick Perry had some choice words for the Obama administration about the stimulus program and the “bailouts” to Wall St. and to the states. He pledged that over his dead body would his state seek a handout from the federal government, and he would not accept any stimulus money from Washington.
But the state was facing down a $6.6 billion shortfall in the 2010-2011 budget, so at the same moment that he denounced the stimulus, he held his hand out and snatched $6.4 billion in stimulus funds, allowing the state to close its budget hole. The state didn’t raise taxes, and it didn’t have to raid its “rainy day fund” that had $9.1 billion in cash sitting there. Crisis averted thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
With no stimulus dollars to lean on for the 2012-2013 budget, Texas faced a $27 billion shortfall according to the state comptroller. And with tax revenues expected to be down by over $15 billion from the last budget term (the Texas legislature meets every two years, and the budget is done in two year cycles), things don’t look to be getting any better. The legislature already had to dip into that rainy day fund to the tune of over $3 billion to cover an unexpected gap in the 2009-2010 budget.
The remaining $6 billion in the rainy day fund, according to even Republican state lawmakers, is already accounted for in the new budget.
Sure Texas lawmakers will tell us that the 2012-13 budget is balanced, but it took a series of parlor and accounting tricks to get there (and for the record, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a budget approved by California Democrats that included similar such gimmicks).
Gone is $4 billion in funding for k-12 education. There are also massive funding cuts to higher education and public services. Gone is $10 billion for child support services, even with 25% of the state’s children living in poverty. The legislature also pushed a due date back by one day of over $2 billion in education funding, rolling that bill over onto the 2014-15 budget cycle.
It is expected that some 50,000 teachers statewide will lose their jobs due to this new budget. This despite an expected increase in school enrollment by 80,000 students. Texas is already one of the least educated states, ranking dead last in the nation in the percentage of the population over age 25 who have earned a high school diploma.
The coup de grace, though, is the deliberate underfunding of state Medicaid programs to the tune of $4.8 billion. It’s a program that Republicans want to do away with anyway, and with a hard right wing Republican dominated state government, why should they fund it?
Texas, by the way, leads the nation in the percentage of its population without any healthcare coverage at all, with 26.8% of the state uninsured. Not good for the second largest state in the Union.”