Mitt
Romney Job Creation Keeping track of Mitt Romney's Job Creation
claims and history.
Welcome
to Mitt Romney Job Creation
With
the 2012 election just around the corner, the
economy (and people's perception of who can do
a better job to improve the economy) will likely
decide the election. Mitt Romney has taken up
the “Job creator” mantle, and is using
his private sector background as a platform to
support this claim. His job creator claim focuses
on two points in history; 1- His time as CEO of
Bain Capital and 2- His time as Governor of Massachusetts.
The Mitt Romney Job Creation, was created in order
to stay on top of these claims and filter through
the noise that so often accompanies anything politically-related.
Bain
Capital
Mitt
Romney’s time at Bain would indeed see the
creation of certain jobs. Unfortunately it would
also see the loss of jobs in others. The question
is: Was there a net increase in jobs? And if so,
how many? Romney claims to have created a net
of 100,000 jobs. But records have yet to be released
and therefore this claim is impossible to verify.
If anything, it would seem that the opposite is
true.
In his book, The
Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause
the Next Great Credit Crisis, Josh Kosman
lays out the history of Bain Capital (and other
private equity firms) have of "purchasing"
companies through leveraged buyouts, gutting thse
companies (lay offs, slashing R&D budgets)
for profits (ie through dividend payouts and selling
the company off). Often times these companies
are unable to sustain themselves for much longer
because the PE firm's focus was on short term
profits (which often comes at the expense of long
term health). Here is a graph from the book.
Here
Josh Kosman explains Bain Capital's activities
on Fox Business.
Mitt Romney claims to have created more jobs as
governor of Massachusetts (2003 to 2007) than
Obama as has president (2008 until at least 2012).
Technically it is true that Massachusetts saw
a net gain in employment from 2003 than the US
economy has seen since Obama’s inauguration
in 2009. Of course, the economy was growing from
2003 to 2007. On the other hand, Obama inaugurated
into an economy that was losing well over half
a million jobs/month, so the comparison is a bit
off base.
The
question is; how did Massachusetts job creation
look compare to other states during that time?
Unfortunately, MA actually ranks 47th in terms
of job growth for that time period.
