Yael T. Abouhalkah: Can add jobs even when unemployment is low

Gov. Sam Brownback loves boasting about the extremely low unemployment rate in Kansas. But when it comes to people actually being employed, Kansas tied for the ninth worst rate of job growth last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It was a puny annual gain of 0.5 percent.

That’s a huge problem for Kansans and for Brownback, who has maintained since 2012 that the individual income tax cuts he pushed through the Legislature were going to be a jobs bonanza for Kansas. They haven’t been.

But here is the excuse he now trots out for that sad fact. As he claimed last week, having a low unemployment rate makes it more difficult to sustain job growth.

“It gets tough the lower your unemployment rate gets...,” Brownback said.

However, it turns out that nine of the 11 states with December unemployment rates lower than or equal to Kansas’ 3.9 percent rate created jobs faster than the Sunflower State last year.

Here are all the numbers for those nine states:

▪  Nebraska: 2.9 percent unemployment, job growth of 1.4 percent.

▪  South Dakota: 2.9 percent unemployment, job growth of 2.2 percent.

▪  Hawaii: 3.2 percent unemployment, job growth of 2.5 percent.

▪  Iowa, 3.4 percent unemployment, job growth of 1.6 percent.

▪  Colorado, 3.5 percent unemployment, job growth of 1.9 percent.

▪  Minnesota, 3.5 percent unemployment, job growth of 1.5 percent.

▪  Utah, 3.5 percent unemployment, job growth of 3.2 percent.

▪  Vermont, 3.6 percent unemployment, job growth of 0.8 percent.

▪  Idaho, 3.9 percent unemployment, job growth of 4.4 percent.

One of the two other states on that list was New Hampshire. It had a better unemployment rate than Kansas, at 3.1 percent, and still matched Kansas’ lackluster 0.5 percent job growth record. The state with the country’s lowest unemployment rate – North Dakota, at 2.7 percent – also had the worst record on jobs, with a minus-4 percent “growth” rate for the year.

Simply having a stellar unemployment rate doesn’t mean your state is a jobs magnet, as North Dakota shows.

Still, Brownback will continue to promote the low unemployment rate in Kansas.

Rep. Annie Kuether, D-Topeka, teased the governor by saying “people are leaving the state of Kansas” because of his policies.

If true, the unemployment rate may keep going down in Kansas but the number of people employed won’t rocket upward.

This story was originally published January 30, 2016 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Yael T. Abouhalkah: Can add jobs even when unemployment is low."