North Dakota Unemployment Rate Up 50%
Welcome to the recession, North Dakota.
Statistics released Wednesday show that the number of unemployed climbed to 18,526 in January, marking the first time in 15 years that North Dakota’s unemployment rate surpassed 5 percent, said Michael Ziesch, a Job Service North Dakota research analyst in Bismarck.
For a long time now myself, and folks at groups like the North Dakota Policy Council, have been advocating caution in state spending and noting that tax cuts now would offset (at least in part) any future economic downturn.
Now the downturn is upon us, and it seems as though all our political leaders in the state can talk about is how to spend more money. But with every dollar they spend, the amount of government we taxpayers must support goes up. And with our state economy slowing down as the national economy has already been doing, we can hardly afford the burden of more government.
We should have passed more tax relief and less spending in the last legislative session. We should have ignored blathering politicians and special interest groups who advocated against initiated measures to cut taxes in the last election. We should be slowing spending and enhancing tax relief in the current legislative session.
We aren’t doing any of those things, and I think the jobs report above is the bleaker for it.
Frankly, Governor Hoeven and all the proponents of big spending and opponents of tax relief, are to blame for this jobs report. We might have lost jobs even if we cut taxes, but I’d be willing to bet the farm on the idea that we wouldn’t have lost as many.
