Or, “ouch!”
That figure is from this article.
Figure 1: Log Nonfarm Payroll Employment 2011M01=0, for US (blue), for Kansas (red). NBER recession dates shaded gray. Source: BLS via FRED, NBER and author’s calculations.
Total NFP employment is below levels of September 2015.
I’m sure some people (see here for one example) will take a Panglossian view, but I can’t see how it’s a particularly good outcome.
More statistical analysis here.
Your graphs on Kansas and Wisconsin are compelling. What would be interesting is to see a table with all states and their values relative to the U.S. average from whatever starting point you choose… 2009, 2010, 2011.
Perhaps such a table exists and you could provide a link. Then the results could be examined in terms of the policies in each state to see if there was a larger pattern.
Bruce Hall: I’ve tried that before. It’s a mess visually. Just imagine 50 colored lines arranged like spaghetti.
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/VennScience.jpg
Minnesota added 15,600 jobs last month. Apparently raising the minimum wage has not hurt job creation. In Minnesota the big budget debate is how to deal with the $900 million budget surplus – spend it, cut taxes, or both. They compromised on both.
http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-posts-big-job-gains-in-april/380123591/
Kansas lost 3,700 jobs in April.
http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/yael-t-abouhalkah/article78817667.html
Wisconsin lost 12,600 jobs in April. The reason WI unemployment rate went down is people left the state or gave up looking for work at a faster rate than the job loss.
http://www.startribune.com/wisconsin-unemployment-rate-dips-to-4-4-percent/380142251/
Most Republicans think the economy has shrunk, not grown, with Barack Obama in the White House. The majority also think the stock market (Dow Industrial Average) has gone down under Obama, when it has actually doubled. They probably also think Sam Brownback is an economic genius. Facts don’t matter anymore. We are living in bizarre times where people just believe what they want to believe. Until their families are eating tree bark, these geniuses will never, ever realize or admit how badly they have been bamboozled!