Brown’s claim no exaggeration

Stoking their long-running feud, California Gov. Jerry Brown recently jabbed at former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, saying the Golden State is “growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas.”

Brown made this claim in the middle of an impassioned defense of climate change science at the American Geophysical Union conference on Dec. 14 in San Francisco.

“We’ve proved in California that the economy grows. And it grows in part because of the climate rules that we’ve adopted,” Brown said.

Perry, a climate change skeptic, was recently selected U.S. energy secretary by Presidentelect Donald Trump. While Texas governor, he repeatedly visited California in an attempt to lure jobs to the Lone Star State, with the promise of less regulation and lower costs.

In his speech, Brown said Perry’s critiques about California’s job-killing red tape don’t hold up.

“Now remember our new secretary of energy, he was coming to California to say: ‘Come to Texas because we have all the jobs in Texas.’

“Well, Rick: I got some news for you, California is growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas, and we have more sun than you have oil!”

With Brown’s reference of Perry, we took his “faster than Texas” claim to mean faster economic growth with a focus on jobs. We decided to zero in on job growth rates in California and Texas, while also weighing GDP and unemployment trends in the states.

We’ll leave the comparison of sunshine to oil for Brown and Perry to wrestle with another day.

Our research

We concede there’s no definition for what “a hell of a lot faster” growth looks like. Still, we’ll do our best to sort out the governor’s claim.

Brown’s spokeswoman pointed us to several news articles detailing California’s recent economic improvements.

Looking solely at 2015 job growth rates, Brown’s claim appears to hold up.

In that year, California added 483,000 jobs, posting a jobs growth rate of 3%, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That pace was twice as fast as Texas’ 1.5% rate.

California’s rapid employment gains have slowed somewhat to about 2% this year through November. That may not qualify as “a hell of a lot faster,” but it’s still greater than Texas’ roughly 1.6% job growth rate so far this year.

The business website Kiplinger.com forecast California would rank 10th in the nation among states for fastest job growth in 2016. It noted that Texas was not on its Top 10 list.

It wasn’t long ago, however, that Texas outpaced California.

In 2014, Texas recorded a 3.7% job growth rate, ahead of California’s 2.9% pace.

Looking to the future, California’s job gains may slow. The closely watched UCLA Anderson Forecast predicts jobs to grow by only 1.5% in the state during 2017 and just 0.8% in 2018.

Because Brown used the phrase “is growing,” we’ll judge him on the most recent figures, not future forecasts.

Overall economy

While the pace of job growth is important, it’s not the only measurement of a state’s economic health. And Brown’s claim could be interpreted as California’s overall economy, not just jobs, is growing much faster than the economy in Texas.

In August, PolitiFact Texas took a deep look at the economies of both California and Texas to evaluate a June claim by Texan Julián Castro, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, that “Today, California is kicking our butt, creating more jobs and more economic growth than Texas.”

It rated the claim True, citing greater jobs, per capita income and GDP growth rates in California. It noted Texas had a lower jobless rate.

Building on that fact check, we looked at the most recent economic figures for both states to see if the assessment still holds.

We found that California’s GDP grew faster than Texas’ in the first two quarters of this year, at rates of 2% and most recently 2.2% compared with Texas’ 1.3% and its most recent quarter, a negative 0.8%, according to a news release in December by the You can watch PolitiFact Wisconsin segments on Wednesday and Friday evenings during the TODAY’S TMJ 4 Live at 6 newscast. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

It was a different story in 2015 when Texas’ GDP expanded by 4.8% (a figure that was recently revised upward) compared with California’s 3.8% GDP expansion.

Comparing unemployment rates, Texas, at 4.6% in November, has consistently fared better than California, where the rate was 5.3% in November, and has hovered well above 5% this year.

California had one more economic bright spot in 2015: Per capita personal income grew at twice the rate as in Texas, 5.4% to 2.6%, according to federal data.

Our rating

Brown recently claimed “California is growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas.”

We took this to mean economic growth with a focus on the pace of job creation. California’s 3% job growth rate in 2015, which doubled Texas’ pace, definitely fits into Brown’s colorful claim.

But California’s rate has slowed to about 2% so far this year, closer to Texas’ 1.6% rate.

Other economic metrics show California faring better than Texas in several, though not all, categories.

We rate Brown’s statement Mostly True.