Rapid Employment Growth Confounds and Contradicts Union BOsses

Two states, Indiana & Wisconsin, are seeing economies accelerate under right to work laws.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s recent selection of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate is prompting many journalists to look more closely at Pence’s record.

As a new Wall Street Journal editorial explains, the Hoosier State’s economic performance since Pence became chief executive in January 2013 is impressive. And one obviously important factor is the state’s Right to Work statute. This law, which prohibits firing employees for refusal to join or bankroll a union, took effect shortly before Pence became governor, but he certainly deserves credit for having enthusiastically supported enactment and retention of the law and for using the bully pulpit to defend it from Big Labor attacks in the courts and in the press.

The contrast between Indiana’s employment climate and that of Illinois, a neighboring state that still lacks Right to Work protections, is stark:

All states have seen declines in the jobless rate, and Indiana’s has fallen to 5% in May from 8.4% in 2013 when Mr. Pence became Governor. The Indiana difference is that the rate has fallen even as the labor force has increased by nearly 187,000. Many states have seen their jobless rates fall in part because so many people have left the labor force, driving down the national labor participation rate to lows not seen since the 1970s. The Illinois workforce has grown by only about 71,000 in the same period, though it is roughly twice as large. Indiana is adding jobs fast enough that people are rejoining the workforce.

Practically the day GOP Governor Scott Walker signed a measure in March 2015 making Wisconsin America’s 25th Right to Work state, union bosses and their lawyers have been trying to overturn the badger State’s ban on compulsory union dues and fees as a condition of employment.

But, job creating private sector businesses are apparently acting on the assumption that Big Labor’s legal campaign to kill the Right to Work law won’t succeed.

According to seasonally-adjusted US Labor Department data, in the first 12 months after the law ws signed, Wisconsin gained roughly 49,000 private sector payroll jobs! The state had not previously experienced 12 month private sector job growth of that magnitude since August 203-August 2004!

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