States that have Republican governors and legislatures have overwhelmingly succeeded at leading their state’s economic recovery sooner than the majority of those governed by Democrats, according to an analysis of the state-by-state unemployment data from the Department of Labor.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) research team’s analysis of the Labor Department’s December data revealed that Republican-led states continue, month after month, to outperform Democrat-led states in job recovery (16 of the top 20 states), and lowest unemployment numbers (16 of the top 20 states.)
“More jobs are being recovered and unemployment is lower in red states,” the RNC research team wrote in their analysis of data from December.
The nine states with the highest job growth in the country are run by Republican governors.
Looking further into the data, the RNC analysis confirmed that 16 of the top 20 states are led by Republican governors. At the same time, 18 of the top 20 recovering states have Republican-controlled legislatures. Similar results were revealed in the November data.
Additionally, four Republican-led states — Utah, Idaho, Texas, and Arizona — have produced more jobs than they had before the coronavirus pandemic started and any restrictions were put in place. Since the coronavirus pandemic, Utah has had 142.9 percent of its jobs recovered, Idaho 121.5 percent, Texas 106.2 percent, and Arizona 104.3 percent. November’s numbers showed similar results, with the same four states at the top.
The RNC analysis also showed that 24 Republican-led states have recovered at least two-thirds of jobs lost during the pandemic. On average, Republican-led states have recovered 87 percent of their lost jobs since the beginning of the pandemic. By comparison, Democrat-led states have recovered, on average, only 75% of jobs lost since the pandemic began.
“Republican governors and legislatures deliver results, while Biden and Democrat governors are leaving Americans behind,” said RNC Chairman Ronna McDaniel on the analysis of the Labor Department’s December data showing Republican-led states continue to lead the economic recovery.
Moreover, according to the RNC analysis, the ten states with the lowest unemployment rates are Republican-led.
The ten Republican-governed states with the lowest unemployment rates from December are Nebraska (1.7 percent), Utah (1.9 percent), Oklahoma (2.3 percent), Idaho (2.4 percent), Montana (2.5 percent), Vermont (2.5 percent), Georgia (2.6 percent), South Dakota (2.6 percent), New Hampshire (2.6 percent), and Indiana (2.7 percent).
Additionally, 16 of the top 20 states with the lowest unemployment rates are led by Republican governors, with 17 having Republican-controlled legislatures, identical to the RNC analysis of November’s date. Seven of the eight states with the highest unemployment numbers in December — four of which are higher than six percent — are led by Democrat governors.
The states with Democrat governors in order of unemployment percentages are Hawaii (5.7 percent), New Mexico (5.8 percent), Connecticut (5.8 percent), New York (6.2 percent), New Jersey (6.3 percent), Nevada (6.4 percent), and California (6.5 percent).
The analysis found that overall, Democrat-led states have an average unemployment rate of 1.5 percentage points higher than the Republican-led states. The 27 states with the lowest unemployment rates — averaging 3.4 percent — have Republican governors, whereas Democrat-led states have an average unemployment rate of 4.9 percent. Both are down from prior months.
Additionally, according to the RNC analysis, of the states that have lower unemployment rates from when the pandemic began, 80 percent are helmed by Republican governors, and 95 percent have Republican-controlled legislatures. It also outlined that 12 states hit new record low unemployment rates, noting that ten of them have Republican governors and all 12 have Republican-controlled legislatures.
“Despite Biden’s reckless spending, skyrocketing prices, and forced mandates, Republican commitments to commonsense, conservative economic policies are leading the way,” McDaniel added.
The December analysis came as President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. and the Democrats spent last year trying to ram partisan bills from the president’s legislative agenda through Congress while the country was recovering from the pandemic. Last year, the Democrats passed the disastrous $1.2 trillion, 2,702-page so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill — which Biden signed into law — and passed the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act (BBB) in the House.
However, while the BBB was considered to be the “marquee legislation” of Biden’s legislative agenda and would ultimately increase taxes on the middle class, expand and prolong the effects of inflation, and add hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. deficit, it was effectively killed by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). The senator said at the end of 2021, “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation.”
The analysis noted that Americans are moving to Republican-led states like Texas and Florida while populations in California, Illinois, and New York are declining. It added that eight of the top ten real estate markets are in Republican-led states. The National Review reported that U-Haul ran out of trucks for people trying to move out of California due to high demand. The report indicated that Florida and Texas were “big inbound winners” for movers.
Biden, who has already started off the year with consistently poor poll numbers, had just 33 percent approval on his job performance from a Quinnipiac University poll days before he completed one full year in office. Additionally, CIVIQS’s rolling job approval average showed that Biden was under water in 46 states, including the two typically solid blue states of California and Rhode Island — and tied in Maryland at the beginning of January.
Nonetheless, under Biden, the country saw the highest inflation rate in nearly four decades, bad jobs reports, and an ongoing supply chain crisis. A recent budget model from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School showed that inflation cost families an additional $3,500 last year, meaning they would have to spend that much more just to keep up with their normal yearly expenses, based on 2019 and 2020 spending.
This ultimately impacted low-income families the hardest.
“Lower-income groups spent relatively more on food, energy, and shelter, while higher-income groups spent relatively more on other commodities and services,” the Wharton study states.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.