Swing States’ Jobs Could Help Bush
Employers added jobs last month in most of the electoral battlegrounds in this year’s presidential race, but the hotly contested states of Ohio and Michigan posted job losses, the government reported Tuesday.
According to the Labor Department’s state-by-state job tally, payroll employment for June rose in 14 of 17 states that most political analysts consider the most competitive between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee.
Four swing states were among last month’s biggest gainers: Missouri added 27,500 jobs, Pennsylvania 20,300, Florida 11,800 and Wisconsin 11,400.
In five states -- Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia -- job creation significantly outpaced the national average of 0.1% in June.
But the widespread gains were tempered by continuing job losses in the industrial Midwest.
Ohio, a presidential bellwether wielding 20 electoral votes, shed 14,100 jobs in June. Michigan, which casts 17 electoral votes, lost 5,400. Both states have been hit hard by the four-year decline in factory employment that began shortly before Bush took office.
New Hampshire, another battleground state, also posted a loss last month, with employment declining by 2,700.
The rising job count in most swing states could provide a lift to Bush, whose economic leadership had become a central issue in the presidential race. Kerry has blamed Bush for a slow-paced recovery that has created 1.5 million jobs since last September, but which nonetheless has left the nation with about 1 million fewer jobs than when Bush took office.
“The state numbers show that we are continuing to pull out of this downswing,” said Charles W. McMillion, president of MBG Information Services, an economics firm in Washington that studies job-growth trends. “For more states, it is no longer true to say this is a jobless recovery.”
Mark M. Zandi, chief economist of Economy.com in West Chester, Pa., said the recent gains might not be enough to improve Bush’s poll ratings on the economy. “You need to string together more than a few months of those kinds of job gains to make a real difference in people’s perceptions of what’s happening,” Zandi said.
Battleground states that posted job gains last month also included Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Maine and Nevada.
Among all 50 states, the biggest increase in payroll employment was in North Carolina, which added 35,400 jobs. Although it is not considered one of the 17 battleground states, some analysts have said Kerry’s choice of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as his running mate may make it less of a stronghold for Bush.
As the job count declined in three swing states, the unemployment rate increased in eight.
Pennsylvania’s jobless rate jumped from 5.1% in May to 5.6%, and Ohio’s rose from 5.6% to 5.8%. There were smaller increases in Florida, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and West Virginia.
It is not uncommon for payroll numbers and the unemployment rate to rise simultaneously. That is particularly true during a recovery, when discouraged workers who dropped out of the labor force look for work again, increasing the ranks of people classified as unemployed.
