Fox and Friends: Who wins the jobs race as Governor?

  A look at the record before some POTUS hopefuls.

Our recent Fox and Friends segment investigates the job creating record that Governors have who may become Presidential hopefuls.  In this analysis, we evaluate the net gain in private jobs created, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  By scoring each current or former Governor during their total months served in office, we can get down to a common metric that most citizens can find useful:  jobs created per day as Governor.

Scoring job performance this way can help us compare and contrast different candidates and their state job experience over a wide variety of time and national economic cycles.  When we do, we can observe the relative size and strength of those Governors who have led from strong economic engines.  Since the top three priorities of most POTUS candidates could easily become jobs, jobs, and jobs, we hope this interactive media can be of use to some.

Our top two Governors, who served eight years or more in major job creating states, are Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) and Governor Rick Perry (R-FL).  Both Governors, over a significant term, during a strong national period, delivered around 400 jobs per day while in office.

At the bottom of the spectrum, we can see the opposite extreme in a state that likes high taxes:  Maryland.  Governor Martin O’ Malley (D-Maryland) weighs in with only two jobs created per day during his time in Annapolis.  As we published in our book Wealth of States, no state has ever taxed its way into prosperity.

Some audiences of mine may ask:  can you see a partisan difference in how most Governors perform on taxes and job performance?  The answer is pretty obvious, at least from the last four years.  Conservative Governors tend to view their governing role as tax cutters.  Liberal Governors as a group tend to govern by raising your taxes.

Since 2011, Republican Governors as a group have cut taxes by $36 billion, or roughly equivalent to the size of Tennessee’s entire state budget.  By contrast, Democratic Governors have raised state taxes by $58 billion.

Who is in charge of your state matters.  The actual jobs records of whoever may govern our United States of America will matter even more.