Krugman provides the context (use Google for free version) to Perry’s claim that “Over the last two years, 40 percent of the net new jobs created in the United States were created in Texas.”

Wanting to research Krugman’s assertions further, I started Googling for TX’s employment rate (i.e., number of jobs divided by working-aged population). Felix Salmon beat me to the punch:

In sum, though TX hasn’t done too badly, there’s no TX miracle. Furthermore:

1) The graph is very “zoomed in” on they y-axis. There isn’t much difference between the U.S. and Texas, so I’m not trashing TX’s record based on these numbers.

2) Employment ratio might be an unfair metric for TX because of the high proportion of retirees. However, that older population also skews the unemployment ratio in TX’s favor (more demand for goods with fewer working-aged folks competing for jobs). So TX is 1 percentage point better than US on unemployment rate and 1.5 worse on employment ratio … basically a wash.

3) TX has done a poor job recovering from the recession. Unemployment plateaued over 1.5 years ago (Oct 2009!) and there’s no relief in sight (ticked up 0.2 in June). In contrast, the U.S.’s rate is 1 point below it’s max. While high oil prices helped mitigate the initial impact recession, Perry hasn’t been able to drive his state’s economy out of the (slightly shallower) pit.