Jobs boom favors Democratic counties, not Trump strongholds
MONACA, Pennsylvania — 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 year- ended this May, 58.5 percent of the job gains were in counties that backed Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to an analysis of monthly government jobs data by county by The Associated Press.
Despite an otherwise robust national economy, the analysis shows a striking number of Trump counties are losing jobs. The AP found 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 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 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 transformat ive job growth in Trump areas hasn’t seemed to erode his support among Republicans, while hiring in Democratic areas has done little to improve his standing with those voters. For Trump’s core supporters, cultural issues 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 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 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, Pennsylvania, northwest of Pittsburgh.
Chip Kohser, the county Republican chairman and the bristle-bearded 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 truck, 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 the $1.5 trillion in tax cuts Trump signed into law last year.
Since May 2017, Beaver County has lost 191 jobs. With the warmer summer 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 tax cuts haven’t stopped the outflow of people. Chatting over eggs, bacon and home fries, Kohser estimated the tax cuts have added, perhaps, $ 1,200 to his annual household income and roughly the same to many others in the area — not likely enough on its own to rejuvenate the local economy.