Texas Gov. Rick Perry had barely annonced he was running for president when the White House and their allies began pushing anti-Texas talking points through the liberal noise machine. Matthias Shapiro, of 10,000 Pennies fame, quickly tired of the wildly inaccurate claims he was reading and decided to refute each of them with the hard data.
Texas Liberal Myth #1: Texas’ 8.2 percent unemployment is hardly exceptional – Texas is adding jobs at a rate faster than any state at 2.2 percent. But the state’s unemployment rate is 8.2 percent, which is higher than blue states like Massachusetts and New York. How is this possible? Easy, Texas’ population is growing much faster than any other state. They have added 739,000 residents since the recession began. If Texas had the same population at the beginning of the recession that they do know, its unemplyment rate would be 2.3%.
