By Tyler Musialowski
Republican Sen. Dan Bishop applauded Ivanka Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ visit to Charlotte June 18 in his campaign’s press release the next day.
“Their visit underscores the incredible North Carolina success story under President Trump’s leadership, with a lower unemployment rate and more than 180,000 new jobs created, including more than 10,000 manufacturing jobs,” according to the release.
It goes on to say that Bishop will work closely with Trump if elected, and that he will fight for continued economic success in the 9th Congressional District.
Several claims are made by Bishop in this release, so let’s examine them.
Unemployment rate
Bishop starts off highlighting North Carolina’s “lower unemployment rate” during Trump’s presidency. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in North Carolina was 4.9 percent when Trump took office in January 2017. The Bureau’s preliminary statistical model for May 2019, the most recent data the organization has compiled for North Carolina, indicates an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent.
By four-fifths of a percentage point, unemployment in North Carolina has lowered during Trump’s time in the White House. North Carolina’s unemployment rate dipped as low as 3.7 percent from August to December of 2018 but has since risen back to the 4.1 mark.
Job creation
Bishop also says that “more than 180,000 new jobs” have been created since Trump took office. Preliminary data from May of 2019 estimates the total employment of North Carolina to be 4,852,204. The total employment in the state at the start of Trump’s presidency stood at 4,670,216, meaning 181,988 jobs have been created in North Carolina during Trump’s tenure. At least in terms of numbers, Bishop’s job-growth claim seems to be accurate – though experts warn against giving credit to one administration, as Bishop did.
Manufacturing jobs
The North Carolina Department of Commerce tracks job growth by sector, and announced the creation of 3,700 new manufacturing jobs between January 2017 and 2018. Between January 2018 and 2019, the North Carolina Department of Commerce announced another increase of 3,700 manufacturing jobs.
The department has not released the total number of manufacturing jobs added in the 2019 calendar year, but combining the totals announced in February, March, April, and May results in an increase of 4,200 such jobs since the beginning of February 2019. In total, 11,600 manufacturing jobs have been created in North Carolina since the Trump presidency began, making Bishop’s statements on the numbers accurate.
“Obstructionist who opposes the tax cuts that unleashed our growth”
Toward the end of Bishop’s release, he calls out Democratic opponent Dan McCready for opposing the tax cuts that Bishop says have spurred the economic growth in North Carolina. It is unclear if the “tax cuts” that Bishop is referring to are at the federal level or at the state level.
McCready addressed Trump’s federal tax reform, which has come under fire from Democrats as a handout to the rich. McCready said the law, formally known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, were “not real tax reform” in a December 2017 Facebook post.
Additional state-level tax cuts were implemented at the beginning of 2019 by the North Carolina General Assembly. McCready has not directly addressed these statewide tax cuts, but he does support “middle-class tax cuts”.
As part of the General Assembly’s 2019 cuts, personal income tax was cut to 5.25 percent, which would apply to middle-class households.
However, it is misleading for Bishop to say that McCready opposes the cuts that seem to have sparked North Carolina’s economic growth. All McCready has officially stated is that he opposed the federal reform as a whole.
Further, it is important to establish that it is difficult to identify exactly what did “[unleash] our growth,” as Bishop said.
The economic growth of North Carolina, and economic growth in general, is difficult to attribute to the actions of one particular individual, or to one set of policies. Many factors are in play at the state, federal, and even international levels.
“Assigning causality to any economic process is terribly difficult,” Mike Aguilar, a professor of Economics at UNC-Chapel Hill and an expert in macroeconomics, told UNC FactCheck.
Patrick Conway, an expert on the labor market and professor of Economics at UNC-Chapel Hill, agreed.
He explained to UNC FactCheck that the state of North Carolina, historically speaking, tends to follow larger national trends in employment.
“From what I’ve observed studying employment, N.C. state policies do not cause large differences in trends from the national trends,” Conway said. “If you compare N.C. to the rest of the U.S., the employment and unemployment tend to move very closely together.”
He added that state laws are less a driving factor in unemployment rates than national policy.
“But I wouldn’t go so far as to attribute it all to Trump,” he said.
He did add that, while not as often, state policy can impact employment.
“State policies can push the labor market outcomes away from the national trend, but it tends not to be often, and tends not to last long,” said Conway.
He then cited North Carolina’s unemployment insurance reform, which, according to Conway’s own research, artificially pushed the state’s unemployment rate down from around the national average.
Conway pointed out that former administrations, because of the time the economy takes to cycle, deserve credit, as well. He said the current trend of declining unemployment enjoyed by the Trump administration really began during Democrat Barack Obama’s presidency.
“We haven’t had a great deal of macroeconomic change [under Trump], other than the [federal] tax cut,” said Conway.
Efforts to reach Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s office for comment were not answered.
