O’Malley Busted Using Bogus Jobs Data
Our friends over at Conservative Victory Maryland have a nice video skewering Governor O’Malley for cherry picking jobs data to make misleading claims.
Kara Markley, a mid-Atlantic regional economist with the BLS, made a similar observation. “We would typically compare the same month year-to-year with the not seasonally-adjusted data,” she said.
That data paints a far different picture from the one O’Malley framed.
In December 2011, Maryland added 24,700 jobs to its 2,529,300 tally from the previous December — a 0.98 percent increase. Virginia added 35,600 jobs to its total of 3,644,500 from 2010 — an 0.97 percent increase.
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By that method, Maryland’s job creation rate topped Virginia by 1/100th of 1 percent.
Using the same month-to-month method, we ran a comparison for all of 2010 and 2011. Virginia came out ahead in eight months, Maryland did better in four.
