Now If Republicans Don't Drive the Economy Into A Double-Dip Recession...

A report just out by Congress's Joint Economic Committee shows a mixed bag state by state when it comes to job growth and economic recovery, but overall the news is good.

• Forty-six states and the District of Columbia added private sector jobs between January and November 2010. The District of Columbia saw the largest expansion of private sector payrolls, expanding by 4.0% in the first eleven months of 2010 and performing significantly better than the national average of 1.1% growth. A number of other states have expanded private sector payrolls by more than 2% in 2010, including Oklahoma (2.7%); Texas (2.5%); Minnesota (2.3%); Arkansas (2.2%); North Dakota (2.1%); Louisiana (2.1%); and Indiana (2.0%).

• Only four states did not experience a net increase in private sector jobs during the first eleven months of 2010. Those states are New Mexico (-0.3%, -1,700 jobs); Rhode Island (-0.5%, -2,000 jobs); Missouri (-0.7%, -15,100 jobs); and Nevada (-1.9%, -18,600 jobs).

• The manufacturing sector added 114,000 jobs since the start of the year (a 1.0% increase in employment), despite a rocky and uneven recovery. Several states with large manufacturing sectors saw consistent increases in production employment. For example, Texas’s manufacturing sector gained jobs in almost every month of 2010, expanding by 3.2% in 2010 and adding 25,900 jobs. Employment within Ohio’s manufacturing sector grew by 2.9% over the same period, adding 17,600 jobs. Other Midwestern states that saw large expansions in their manufacturing sectors in 2010 include Michigan (3.1%, 13,700 jobs); Minnesota (4.4%, 12,700 jobs); Illinois (1.7%, 9,600 jobs); Indiana (1.8%, 7,500 jobs); and Iowa (3.2%, 6,400 jobs).1

• The professional and business services sector added 373,000 jobs this year (a 2.3% increase in employment). Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia added jobs in the professional and business services sector from January to November 2010. California gained jobs in this sector in each of the first eleven months of 2010 for a total gain of 55,600 jobs this year. The growth in California’s professional and business services sector (2.8%) exceeds the national average (2.3%). Other states whose professional and business services sectors expanded in 2010 include Indiana (10.6%, 27,800 jobs); Mississippi (9.0%, 7,500 jobs); Iowa (7.0%, 8,200 jobs); and the District of Columbia (6.4%, 9,600 jobs). Texas (5.5%, 67,100 jobs) and New York (2.7%, 28,900 jobs) also gained a substantial number of jobs in the professional and business services sector, although the gains in those states as a share of employment within the industry were not as large as in other states.

• The leisure and hospitality sector added 183,000 jobs this year (a 1.4% increase in employment). Gains in the leisure and hospitality sector were uneven over 2010. In July 2010, 37 states and the District of Columbia added jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector. More recently, in November 2010, 23 states and the District of Columbia added to their leisure and hospitality sectors.

Short version: Job creation is going forward at a faster pace than in previous recoveries, even though this was the harshest recession since the 1980s. Of the 8 million jobs Bush's Republican policies destroyed, something like a million have come back in the past year as those policies were ameliorated to some extent. Had Obama and the Congress moved more aggressively to dump more of the Republican greed agenda, it is likely the country would be much further along the road now.

What worries me is that now that the GOP has captured control of the House-- and with the extremely conservative Senate even more conservative-- the country is likely to start sliding backwards. This week CNN reported a dangerously huge and widening gap between the very rich and the average American in terms of household wealth.

The richest 1% of U.S. households had a net worth 225 times greater than that of the average American household in 2009, according to analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. That's up from the previous record of 190 times greater, which was set in 2004.

The widening gap came even as wealthy households' average net worth tumbled 27%-- to about $14 million-- between 2007 to 2009. That's the first time that they suffered a decline since the three-year period of 1992 to 1995.

Meanwhile, the average family's net worth plunged 41%-- to just $62,200-- from 2007 to 2009, according to EPI's calculations.

How are newly empowered Republicans going to handle this? They are quickly handing effective power back to the revolving-door lobbyists who drove the country into a ditch the last time the GOP had power. Yesterday we talked about how clueless Illinois teabagger Joe Walsh is turning down standard congressional benefits, like healthcare and retirement packages. What we didn't get into is that he's already hired a Wall Street lobbyist as his chief of staff.

And Walsh is hardly the biggest threat to the economy and the well-being of American families. He's a lowly freshman who isn't even welcome in his own party's inner circle. Powerful new committee chairs are doing the same thing.

A few days ago, incoming Agriculture Chairman Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) announced the hire of Ryan McKee as the senior staffer to oversee the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. McKee is currently a lobbyist working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s division dedicated to deregulating complex derivatives products. In her new role working for Lucas, McKee will be liaising with regulators in charge of implementing new rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to overhaul the over-the-counter derivatives market.

As Think Progress reported, the Chamber, which is funded by AIG, JP Morgan, CitiGroup, and other financial interests, took the lead role in fighting to defeat Wall Street reform efforts. Last year, the Chamber organized a conference call with other financial industry lobby groups and bank lobbyists to coordinate their efforts. As Tim Fernholz reported, McKee made clear that she was fighting to “kill” financial reform:

“We want to make sure that we hold all the Republicans and are able to influence enough Democrats to have a working majority to kill this thing outright or modify it to the point where it’s palatable to the business community,” Jason Matthews, the Chamber’s director of congressional affairs, told the callers. Ryan McKee, a senior director at the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets, was even more direct in response to a question from an caller: “We’re fundamentally trying to kill this,” she said.

UPDATE: Fred Upton Too Moderate For The GOP?

Remember a couple weeks ago when the House Republicans were fighting amongst each other over the all-important (a huge source of political graft and corruption) Energy and Commerce Committee? The far right and Big Business interests, especially Big Oil, were claiming that Michigan mainstream conservative Fred Upton was practically a liberal because he liked ebergy saving light bulbs or something absurd like that. But Upton beat out bribe-taking sociopath/BP apologist Joe Barton (R-TX) anyway. Upton might indeed be a little moderate for the current Republican Party-- but where it really counts, he fits right in. Upton just hired notoriously crooked Industrial Medical Complex lobbyist Howard Cohen to run the committee's show on health care issues. The bribes will just keep flowing ino the GOP through the revolving door.