Trump v. the Wall Street Journal on Virginian Employment

If I told you that Trump lies a lot – you might laugh that we all know that. But it is interesting when even the Wall Street Journal is refuting the latest from the Trump campaign. As soon as Hillary Clinton picked Tim Kaine as his running mate, Team Trump decided to rehash how employment growth has been awesome in Indiana (since Mike Pence governed that state) while employment in Virginia has somehow tanked. Of course Indiana employment has grown only 2.6% since December 2007 while Virginia grow by 3.6% over this period. Trump is fact challenged as this WSJ blog also notes:

While governor, Virginia’s economy outperformed the U.S. in several key measures…When the U.S. economy fell into recession in 2008 and 2009, Virginia’s economy still managed to expand, albeit slightly. The state’s economy grew 0.1% in 2008, versus a 0.3% decline for the U.S., and advanced 0.5% in 2009, when the U.S. economy contracted 2.8%...When Mr. Kaine took office in January 2006, Virginia’s unemployment rate was 1.5 percentage points below the national level. When he left office, the state’s rate was 2.4 percentage points below the U.S. rate…Employment in Virginia grew robustly during Mr. Kaine’s first two-and-half years as governor, expanding 4% between January 2006 and July 2008. Employment fell sharply during his remaining time in office, but never sank below the level he inherited. Conversely, total U.S. employment only recovered to the January 2006 level in late 2012.

Since 2007, employment growth nationwide has been very modest and employment growth for Virginia has been about the same. Indiana on the other hand has seen awful employment growth over this period. But do not expect Donald Trump to tell you the truth about this or anything else.