Tag Archives: Minnesota unemployment

Daytonomics Drags MN to Disastrous 3.7% Unemployment Rate

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DaytonomicsOver the last several years, Minnesota business leaders and conservatives like Tom Emmer and Jeff Johnson have predicted that Governor Dayton’s combination of 1) asking the wealthiest citizens to pay their fair share of taxes, 2) increasing the minimum wage and 3) refusing to enact Pawlenty-style government spending cuts would lead to disaster for the state’s economy.  This has been their war cry for years.

Minnesota business leaders are now here to tell us that their prediction has proven correct.

Following Dayton’s implementation of those three pillars of Datyonomics, Minnesota currently has a 3.7 percent unemployment rate.  Meanwhile, the Twin Cities metropolitan area has a 3.2 percent unemployment rate.

Minnesota’s 3.7 percent unemployment rate compares very favorably to the nation’s 5.8 percent rate.  It also looks strong next to the 6.0 percent unemployment rate corporate darling Mitt Romney boasted he could achieve by the end of 2016 if Romnomics polcies were enacted.  Conservative Romnomics –tax cuts for the wealthy, no mininum wage increase and massive government spending cuts — essentially would have been the polar opposite of Daytonomics.

While a 3.7 percent unemployment rate in the wake off Daytonomics may look like proof that conservatives and business leaders were incorrect about the destructive impacts of progressive policies, Twin Cities Business reports that Minnesota business leaders disagree. While they acknowledge that high unemployment under Daytonomics would have been bad news for the economy, they now stress that low unemployment under Daytonomics is also bad news for the economy.

“…some business leaders around the state had previously expressed worries about a cooling economy this winter, citing a potential labor shortage as the unemployment rate drops.”

To summarize, if the unemployement rate under the DFL Governor’s progressive policies would have remained at Pawlenty-era peaks (8.3 percent), that would have been proof that Daytonomics was hurting the state economy.  But now that unemployment under Dayton policies is low (3.7 percent), that is also evidence that Daytonomics is hurting the economy.

In other words, progressive Daytonomics simply cannot be considered a success. Just ask Minnesota business leaders and conservatives.

– Loveland

In Minnesota, Romney’s 6% Unemployment Goal Sounds Like Underachievement

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Mitt Romney is pledging to bring the national unemployment rate to 6% by 2016.  The current national unemployment rate is 8.1%.  So, happy days are here again, the skies above are clear again, right?

Romney’s 6% pledge may inspire confidence in Nevada, where unemployment is running at almost 12%.  But to Minnesotans’ ears, it sounds like Romney is promising an economic downturn.  Minnesota’s unemployment rate has already decreased in the Obama years to 5.6%, and by Romney’s 2016 deadline for reaching 6% Minnesotans certainly expect to be below today’s 5.6%.

After all, in the last three years Minnesota’s unemployment rate has improved from 8.3% in April 2009 to 5.6% in April 2012.  If that rate of improvement continued in Minnesota, we’d be down around 3% before Romney’s 2016 deadline for getting us to 6%.  Even if there is no improvement at all over the next three years, Minnesota under Obama will still be outperforming the Romney goal for four years from now.

It is far from certain that Romney’s proposed return to the Bushonomics that preceded the economic meltdown will now somehow improve the economy.   Romney wants Bush tax rates and Bush-style deregulation of banks, Wall Street and other corporations, so I’m not sure why we might expect that will produce a different result than it produced for Bush.  Governor Romney also wants to add austere spending cuts in programs that help the middle class, which economists say will retard consumer demand and economic growth.

But even if Romney’s 6% unemployment goal is doable under Bushonomic policies, a very big “if,” as a political rallying call 6% sounds very weak in many states.

Minnesota is not the only place where Romney’s pursuit of 6% unemployment within four years sounds like underachievement.  Romney’s Six Percent Solution also rings hollow in swing states such as Iowa (5.1% unemployment), New Hampshire (5.0% unemployment) and Virginia (5.6% unemployment).

The Obama Administration learned a hard lesson about naming unemployment rates.  Though Politifact says that Republican claims that Obama promised unemployment rates below 8% are “Mostly False,” the whole political back-and-forth about that claim shows how dangerous it is to make any numerical proclamations about unemployment rates.

In states like Minnesota, Romney may now learn that lesson.