GOP areas not feeling jobs boom
Democratic strongholds reporting most employment gains
MONACA, Penn. — The United States is on pace to add about 2.6 million jobs this year under President Donald Trump’s watch. Yet the bulk of the hiring has occurred in bastions of Democratic voters rather than in the Republican counties that put Trump in the White House.
On average for the yearended this May, 58.5 percent of the job gains were in counties that backed Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to an Associated Press analysis of monthly government jobs data by county.
Despite an otherwise robust national economy, the analysis shows that a striking number of Trump counties are losing jobs. The AP found that 35.4 percent of Trump counties have shed jobs in the past year, compared with just 19.2 percent of Clinton counties.
The jobs data shows an economy that is as fractured as the political landscape ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. As more money pools in such corporate hubs as Houston, San Francisco or Seattle, prosperity spills over less and less to smaller towns and cities in America’s interior. That would seem to undercut what Trump sees as a central accomplishment of his administration — job creation for middle class and blue-collar workers in towns far removed from bustling urban centers.
Job growth in Trump’s economy is still concentrated in the same general places as it was toward the end of Barack Obama’s presidency — when roughly 58.7 percent of the average annual job gains were in Democratic counties.
Yet the lack of transformative job growth in Trump areas hasn’t seemed to erode his support among Republicans, while hiring in Democratic areas have done little to improve his standing with those voters. For Trump’s core supporters, cultural is-
sues such as gun rights, immigration and loyalty to the president have become dominant priorities.
Trump has pointed with pride at a strengthening national economy in hopes that voters will reward the Republican Party by preserving its majorities in the House and Senate this year. The government reported the fastest quarterly economic growth since 2014 and the unemployment rate is a healthy 3.9 percent. At a Pennsylvania rally on Thursday, the president declared, “Our economy is soaring. Our jobs are booming.”
But other issues preoccupy the minds of the party faithful in Trump strongholds such as Beaver County, Penn., northwest of Pittsburgh.
Chip Kohser, the county Republican chairman and founder of a farm share company, said his party members are rallying around their staunch opposition to gun control.
“Our No. 1 motivating factor,” he said, “is Second Amendment issues.”
Kohser, 41, drives a white pickup, smokes cigars and views America as being jaggedly splintered along ideological lines that make it hard to find common ground. Democratic calls for stricter gun control in the aftermath of mass shootings, he said, are fueling more zeal among his Republican volunteers than are the $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that Trump signed into law last year.
Since May 2017, Beaver County has lost 191 jobs. With warmer weather, hiring is now on an upswing. But employers have fewer job applicants available as the labor force has shrunk by roughly 1,000 workers in the past 12 months, the result of decades of population loss that hit former steel towns such as Aliquippa, Beaver Falls and Midland.
The United States is full of places like Beaver County. They are areas where the currently robust national economy and job market obscure long-standing woes that generations
of politicians have struggled to reverse. There are the long-shuttered factories, stagnant incomes and the departure of college-educated workers to cities and surrounding suburbs.
Many of those forgotten men and women might cheer the president for imposing tariffs on imported goods to defend U.S. factory jobs or his vow to build a wall on the Mexican border to block illegal immigration. But for struggling communities waiting for jobs to be restored, Trump’s tax cuts — which were skewed toward corporations and wealthy individuals — have yet to deliver.
During the past year, the healthiest job gains have been in counties containing such vibrant cities as Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Seattle, all of them places that have favored Democrats.
Texas, which Trump won handily, reflects the geographic split in the economy. Within that state, Clinton — not Trump — won the counties that have accounted for the bulk of that state’s job growth.
Though public opinion surveys suggest that the economy gives an advantage to Trump and the Republicans, the economy no longer packs as big a punch with the electorate.
When the Pew Research Center asked voters in June to identify the nation’s most pressing issue, more of them chose immigration, race, political gridlock or Trump himself than the economy. The proportion of people who said the economy was their top priority fell to its lowest level in more than eight years.
Sixty percent of Americans told Pew that they see their midterm vote as an act of either supporting the president (26 percent) or opposing him (34 percent). That is the highest combined number since Pew began asking such a question in 2006.
And 68 percent said that control of Congress would influence how they vote, the highest level in two decades.