Dallas Fed Head Attempts to "Separate Fact from Fiction" When It Comes to Texas Jobs

• A good article with facts. The job growth in Texas is not disputed, it is fact. Often with semi-smart people, when the facts conflict with their preconceived notions, they start reaching. This is what is happening right now in the media. The media is bringing on guests playing intellectual games with the "quality" of the jobs. This job quality discussion is the kind of commentary you hear from arrogant elitist people who have secure jobs or trust funds that never worked one of these "bad jobs". Work is the great equalizer, it solves almost all of life's problems excepting those related to the soul. Work built the middle class. In visiting places outside the US working in retail, waitstaff, and trades are all respectable professions. Other countries wonder what is wrong with our new culture that we focus so much attention on the "image of our jobs". It is a good question that they ask.

• I don't know anything particular about the commercial market, yet, the economy has been better here than elsewhere, from what I read.  I would think that would make the business climate at least marginally better. 

• I made that statement with regard specifically to commercial properties, and yes, the pain in that segment has been similar to other markets around the country. It has not been quite as pronounced as certain submarkets in S Cal and Florida, but taken as a whole, we didn't insulate ourselves AT ALL from the commercial property frenzy. And on the Texas Miracle comment, I was simply confirming that you rightly have taken credit away from Perry (among others) who claim that they are making Texas great for business. Most of the things that make Texas good for business are beyond their control. The ones that they could help, like creating a healthy, educated workforce, they have squandered.

• I wasn't arguing for the Texas miracle, wasn't defending Perry in the least.  Again, our values didn't boom or have they swooned like most other states.  The pain here absolutely hasn't been as acute, that is an asinine statement on your part.  Hardly anyone is underwater here.  While home sales fell 3.5% nationally, in the Hill Country they GREW 35% just last quarter.  That's all I'm saying.  If our economy were doing better, perhaps only illegals would be mowing yards. 

• Your story doesn't confirm the "Texas Miracle" - please retract your statement. The fact is that we live in the state with the highest rate of uninsured (and probably the highest absolute number of uninsured) so there's really only one place for the new healthcare spending to come from - the government, whether it's local, state, or federal. Why people can't see that is beyond me. And while home values here did not spike, we were still beneficiaries of cheap money policies that put people in homes they could not afford. The same thing was true of commercial properties. Those restructurings are less high profile than angry homeowners being kicked out of their house (mostly because the investors who lose money on commercial property would prefer to keep a lower profile to the next round of investors they convince to give them money) but the pain has been just as acute here as around the rest of the country.

• If you're hiring illegals, it's your fault.  I have 5-6 competitors, and myself who mow yards and do landscaping, we are White male native Dallasites.  We might charge a bit more than the cheapest illegals, but not much.  Again, blame yourselves for the illegals, it's your choice. The best critique against Perry is that he has borrowed money at a faster rate than the Federal gov't over the last few years.  Those teaching and healthcare jobs were funded by Obama's stimulus program, which allowed Perry to fail to address the budget shortfall earlier.  Rather, he took the money, papered over the problem then let the crisis we faced this Spring hit.  Texas has always been behind the national curve, recessions come here a few years after they hit the rest of the country, and we boom later too.  Perhaps the biggest benefit we enjoyed was that our homes didn't spike up in value like they did elsewhere.  Hence, we didn't have the budget shortfalls that other states experienced.  We've been lucky to be sure.  Of course much of our counter-cyclical trends are due to our oil industry.  There are many places in the country that are enjoying similar petro booms, North Dakota, Pennsylvania are two that come to mind.  Those areas also didn't spike in value like California, Nevada and Florida.  Perry gets no credit for any of that, but will deserve "credit" for the certain recession we'll experience form the State budget cuts that are about to be felt throughout the economy.

• I know many people who mow lawns who aren't Mexican.  And, we all charge a competitive price. 

• How many Texans have left the state to find acceptable wages

• How many of the Texas Jobs went to non documented illegal immigrants?  How many of those Texas jobs went to non American citizens on foreign visas?

• They "recommended" Bill White last year - but that doesn't mean they'd give the nod to Obama if that was the Nov. 2012 race.

• Only illegals gain from a growing regional economy? Wouldn't a lack of infrastructure drive jobs away (Boeing to Chicago instead of Dallas)?

• Lets say the low taxes, cheap real estate, non-union labor and minimal regulation lures a company to relocate from Michigan to Texas, decreasing MI jobs by 500 and "creating" 500 new jobs in TX.  Then 5 illiegal immigrants get new jobs mowing the lawns of the 500 people who came here from MI.  By the first method above, TX created 505 new jobs.  By the second method, 5 new jobs.  How many jobs did Texas create for out-of-work Americans?  0. Purporting to "create" jobs by competing them away from other states via a lack of taxes and corresponding Government services (i.e. schools, infrastructure)  is a race to the bottom, and cannot be duplicated on national scale.

• Gotta agree with Fisher, Texas is where its at.

• the only 'miracle' that would ever happen is if DMN will stop publishing 'balanced' editorials about Rick Perry and then deny that they support him or his candidacy. Their passive aggressive approach to Perry over the years is a sad attitude for our only daily. One can assume that Dechard is on the Perry presidential bus.

• We need more folks from LA to mow our lawns, the Mexicans are charging too much.

• So if you consider that working at Burger King mopping floors is a good paying job, it does create revenue for Dollar Stores and Walmart, but does not necessarily translate into $150,000 or more home buying, new car sales, and not using Parkland Hospital as your doctor. So I guess the media needs to ask the question.....how 'low' do you want the bar to be set?

• Fisher should run for Senate again.  He was great last time.

• When we have population growth, by necessity job growth will occur. Unfortunately, a lot of those jobs are service jobs that don't pay a lot. We end up with lots of people scraping by, which will inevitably put pressure on government to provide services, which will either cause taxes to rise to accomodate government spending, or crime to rise so people can eat, or some combo thereof. People flocked to LA in the early part of the 20th century for the same reasons people are coming to Texas today. Just wait. We'll see how this plays out.

• I think this misses the major argument that people are making, that despite Perry's claims of small government that the bulk of the jobs created in Texas are taxpayer funded. "Educational & Health Services" being lumped into one separate from "government" isn't very helpful for disproving that argument.

• It's likely those impressive bars in the graph representing "government" and "educational & health services" jobs will come down soon thanks to the Perry budget cuts, but - Praise Jesus -  the Rainy Day Fund has been saved from use! -Moron.

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