In an article notable for its lack of sham objectivity, and bereft of the usual he said/she said “balance” the News Journal’s business reporter, Jonathan Starkey takes a hatchet to Jack Markell’s job creating prowess.
It starts off staid enough, comparing Delaware’s recent job losses to national job gains.
Even as the national jobs picture brightened on Friday, Delaware’s economic recovery showed signs of weakening, with layoffs continuing across the state into the first month of 2011.
Employers here shed a net 700 jobs in January, according to state labor data released Friday. The state’s unemployment rate, which has slowly ticked up since last summer, hovered at 8.5 percent in January.
…in Delaware is gloomier. Here, job loss was felt across several sectors in January, and no sector recorded more than marginal gains. Retailers cut 800 jobs, while the health sector, Delaware’s most prominent long-term job creator, slashed 600 jobs.
Restaurants also seem to be having a tough run in early 2011. The leisure and hospitality sector posted a loss of 500 jobs in January.
Then Starkey makes like Walker Texas Ranger roundhouse kicking some perps.
Federal labor data show that Delaware employers shed 4,900 jobs from July 2010 to this January.
“There’s no putting a happy face on the January numbers,” said George Sharpley, an economist with the state Labor Department. “They’re by and large disappointing.”
But more than 36,000 Delawareans who want work remain jobless. Michael Bratus, an associate economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pa., who studies Delaware’s economy, said no state in the U.S. has a worse net job-creation record than Delaware over the last several months.
“Job growth has been so weak, it’s been unable to absorb the job seekers who are re-entering the labor market,” Bratus said.
Bratus and others largely blame Delaware’s economic turmoil on the state’s financial sector — which added 200 jobs from December to January but is poised to post big losses in coming months.
No quote from CRI? Starkey was phoning this one in I guess.
Anyway, the article does not go into possible fixes for Delaware’s sluggish job growth. Perhaps because the solution has been so well covered that we all know it by heart: Cut a bunch of state jobs and keep Charlie Copeland’s taxes laughably low.