Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence. Yet an incumbent candidate for the Pima County Board of Supervisors states in her campaign ads that Tucson has the third-highest job growth of US cities in 2016 without citing any references.
As my wife and I live in this supervisor’s district and have to decide who should get our votes this November, I decided to see if this claim was true. So first I decided to check WalletHub, an oft-cited resource for data on US cities. WalletHub’s list of the best cities in the US to find a job in 2016 came out on 1/2/16. Tucson’s job market was ranked 115th of the 150th largest US cities.
OK, that was early in the year. Maybe things improved as the year went along. Well, USA Today put out on 5/21/16 a list of the top 25 cities for job growth in 2016 and Tucson didn’t make the list. Forbes put out a list in July 2016 of the 15 US cities with the fastest growing business and professional employment sector, an important economic barometer as these white-collar jobs aren’t seasonal and pay better than average. Tucson didn’t make the list.
I did find Tucson ranked on the www.newgeography.com database for 2016 job growth . It was ranked 59th among 98 medium-sized US cities as of Oct. 2016, a significant improvement from its 82nd place finish in 2015. But it’s still nowhere near what this incumbent supervisor claims.
Finally, I decided to see what the US Census employment data was saying about Tucson compared to past years, compared to other Arizona cities, and how its various employment sectors were comparing. The data from the website was somewhat shocking.
- After 7-8 years of economic “recovery” Tucson still has fewer people working overall now than it did in the 2007-2008 timeframe.
- The number of people working in construction is down from 2010 and even 2013 levels, and is barely half the total working in the field in 2006-2007. Overall, construction has fared the worst of any sector since 2007, shedding 12,000 jobs.
- Although there has been a 2.1% increase in employment from a year ago, which means that about 8000 more Tucsonans are employed than last year – a good thing to be sure, this is the same growth rate as Phoenix, and this growth rate lags cities such as Prescott.
- The sectors of employment that are employing more people now than they did pre-recession are mining and logging; finance; education and health; and leisure and hospitality. The greatest increase in jobs is in the education and health sector – over 10,000 more jobs than in mid-2007.
The sectors of employment employing fewer people than they did in mid-2007 are construction; manufacturing; trade, transportation and utilities; information; professional and business services; other services.
After all this research, my wife and I have come to the conclusion that the claims of this incumbent supervisor have no factual basis whatsoever and thus we’ll be voting for her opponent.
D. Viking
Tucson, AZ