Help wanted: jobs creator, a real one.

• Author: Mooneyham, Scott
• Position: CAPITALGOODS

I read that N.C. state university economist mike walden predicts the state's unemployment rate will drop by 2 percentage points next year. His forecast came before the federal government shutdown, so we should cut him some slack if his numbers miss the mark. My immediate thought about this had less to do with the federal government and more to do with the state's, my bailiwick. That thought: The crowd in charge in Raleigh better hope he is right.

An oddity of the jobs numbers is how much attention politicians pay to them despite having so little control over them. Awhile back, Don Carrington, executive editor of the John Locke Foundation's Carolina Journal (and colleague of fellow BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA columnist John Hood), detailed the machinations in the administration of former Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue regarding the state's monthly jobs report. He questioned whether federal law had been violated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics sharing draft numbers with the governor's office. I found far more fascinating his findings, based on emails, on how much sweat flowed to fashion a few lines of a press release. Perdue's people didn't recognize that, no matter how pretty the words, hard numbers cannot be hidden.

All that effort can be explained by the fact that the public holds the political class responsible for the economy. We need someone to blame, right? Politicians bring some of it on themselves. When a big company comes to town, state leaders crow about it as if the decision was due expressly to their personal charm. At the other extreme, when bad jobs reports come out, politicians in the opposing party pounce, making sure everyone knows that this didn't happen on their watch.

The reality is that states move mostly with prevailing regional and national economic winds. In 2008, when investment bank Bear Stearns & Co. went belly up, no governor could stop the chain of events that caused pain in every state. When low-skill textile jobs began moving overseas in the 1980s, all Southern states took a hit. Pols could talk about retraining workers and recruiting new jobs; they could not bring back the old ones. At the national policymakers control monetary policy. But that is no substitute for the strange brew that generates consumer confidence or sparks economic innovation. At the state level, levers for immediate economic relief are limited...