Wednesday, March 5, 2008

WSJ: Texas economy strong vs Ohio.

So says an editorial in the Monday edition of the Wall Street Journal. I guess with all the primary attention being on these two large states somebody decided to do some comparing. The economic and demographic numbers, shown below, look good for Texas and bad for Ohio. I bring this to readers' attention not to gloat, but to say we are fortunate, considering the national economy.

The WSJournal has conjectural (it is an editorial) reasons for Texas' advantage, reasons I happen to agree with. For instance, nearly 1,000 new manufacturing plants have been built in Texas since 2005. One of the reasons given, that manufacturers like the labor pool and the lack of labor regulation; that is, manufacturers are first looking for ways to get value inexpensively, just like you do when you go shoe shopping. If manufacturers can do that in Texas they will move here, if not, they won't. That may be an over-simplification, but you get the point.

One statistic I had not heard before: Texas is the largest international exporter among the 50 states.

Here are the main WSJ stats:

New Job Creation
Texas: 1,615,000
Ohio: -10,400

Net domestic migration
Texas: 667,000
Ohio: -362,000

Unemployment rate
Texas: 4.5%
Ohio: 6%

Per capita income growth (10 yr)
Texas: 55%
Ohio: 43%

Exports (in billions)
Texas: $150.9
Ohio: $37.8

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I heard on the radio this morning that Fort Worth is in the top 5 cities for employment.

Poor OHIO -- even Labron James wants to bail!!

Francis Shivone said...

Right ---- :)