Behold the New Jersey Miracle!

[cthulu2016]

May 27, 2012, 3:30 pm
The Jersey Comeback

One real problem with living in New Jersey is that the state’s two major cities are, of course, New York and Philadelphia — which means that even if you live here, policy and politics reporting tends to be sparse. So it wasn’t until the latest budget fiasco surfaced that I even knew that Christie was running on the theme of the “Jersey Comeback”.

And now that I know, I wonder what on earth he’s talking about. Here’s job growth in three mid-Atlantic states since Christie took office. We’re the blue line at the bottom:

I’m actually not sure why NJ is doing so much worse than New York or Pennsylvania, and I doubt that Christie has much to do with it, but he’s the one trying to claim credit for … what?

Of course, his response to this chart would probably be to yell insults at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/the-jersey-comeback/

[Scootaloo]

1. Absent the numbers, "better" equals "good"

Just as "worse" equals "bad"

New Jersey's employment is doing better than in the past. Without the actual figures - and without comparisons to employment elsewhere - it's easy for Christie or whoever else to say "I'm doing a good job on employment!" and a lot of people will agree.

Similarly, a news story about how job growth under the Obama administration this month is "worse than" growth last month, absent of figures or diagrams, turns into a story about jobs being lost (i.e., "doing badly) instead of just growth at a slower pace.

[Historic NY]

2. Well he did nix transit construction...

and compared to the other 2 states there doesn't appear to be much highway construction going on at all