You’re Doing Fine Oklahoma! Stitt’s in Q-A-T-A-R! Oklahoma…QA!

You’re friendly neighborhood Tired Blogger is basking in the limelight of total anonymity. While I live a glamorous lifestyle of ease and luxury, Governor Stitt meanwhile is doing all the heavy lifting for the state, having jet set (without telling anyone evidently) to Qatar to see the Circus of the Gladiators. Or whatever is going on out there. I for one don’t envy him.

When I was a kid we had one of those old Qatari game systems. I’ll tell you, after a while Asteroids and Pong get old.

With my luck someone from my ex girlfriend’s family will kill me in an honor duel.

Anyway, thelostogle, who as we all know is bad for Oklahoma (and we all know Stitt is not bad for Oklahoma) revealed that Stitt had gone to Qatar for the World Cup without telling anyone in the media. As said unfound Ogler, nobody missed him.

But you can go over that story with them. https://thelostogle.com/2022/12/14/governor-stitt-jets-away-to-world-cup-in-qatar

What your Tired Blogger (what blogs at Midnight) wants to talk about is Stitt’s claims that the Oklahoma economy is going gangbusters. That would be great news for your Tired Blogger, because I have not seen a strong Oklahoma economy since I was 12.

Stitt claims: 1) Oklahoma has an unemployment rate of 2.3% as of last February.

2) Personal income has grown by a rate of $3000.

3) The state achieved a historic amount of savings, an amount of $2.8 billion, as of August 3, 2022.

These are my sources for that information:

https://oklahomawatch.org/2022/10/31/the-stitt-record-on-the-economy-workforce/

https://oklahoma.gov/governor/newsroom/newsroom/2022/august2022/governor-stitt-achieves-historic-state-savings-of–2-8-billion.html

So lets investigate if these claims are true, and if they are true, is Stitt to credit for it, or something else. I just love counting beans!

My sources I will be leaning on:

https://www.normantranscript.com/news/fact-checking-campaign-ad-claims-on-stitt-s-first-term/article_9b77df32-ae11-11ec-8de0-bfe082172e47.html

https://oklahomawatch.org/2022/10/31/the-stitt-record-on-the-economy-workforce/

https://www.readfrontier.org/stories/we-fact-checked-campaign-ad-claims-on-stitts-first-term-as-governor/

Let’s dig in.

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m getting over my head. I don’t feel that way about this one. It just seems too obvious. I almost feel stupid writing this.

I’ve taken a few economics courses. That makes me no expert, by all means listen to Warren Buffet and not me.

For that matter, I’ll throw a video here for anyone that needs some financial advice. Not Warren Buffet, but I am watching it and think if I can just actually listen to this guy, it will help me.

The reason I feel stupid is not that I am awed by Stitt’s amazing intelligence. I can’t believe I’m looking at this stuff and actually feeling the need to explain this stuff.

Stay positive. Stay positive.

That insanely low unemployment rate of 2.3% would be the most incredible news. To a Tired Blogger, this would be a sign that maybe the Titanic is finally turning around.

According to Oklahomawatch, “The metrics Stitt publishes on an online dashboard to monitor Oklahoma’s economic progress paint a less rosy picture.

“Particularly frustrating to Stitt is data showing nearly 40% of working-age Oklahomans were not in the workforce as of September. They are not only jobless, but they aren’t looking for work, meaning they aren’t counted in the unemployment rate.”

Here’s the deal. While I’m about to relate something that won’t be PC, and also will be anecdotal, and thus not truly scientific, I think it bears sharing at this point. I have worked in some form of retail for nearly 25 years. While I don’t hit the trade nearly as much as I used to, I still have some friends who are wandering the wilderness hoping they can go to the Promised Land.

The first of the month is sheer hell in some places. Often you are doing the vast majority of your sales in a few days. Year in and year out you see the same faces, coming in long lines, hordes of the poor. Some have it worse than I’ve ever had. Some who will never know a moments fear that they will be homeless. Then you start seeing their kids in the line. And those kids grow up. And then they have kids. And those kids grow up. Generations who have maintained their poverty-ridden lives from SNAP. All races (don’t even dare think I single out one, this is across the spectrum). All creeds. Some walk on hobbled feet with shoes worn from years of walking miles. Some pulling up in Cadillacs.

So which is it? 2.3%? Or 40%?

The 2.3% figure is obtained from the Census Bureau. They do a convoluted thing that sounds more or less like a good random survey of over 100,000 people and use the data from that to determine the unemployment rate, both nationally and locally. So I suspect that is where Stitt gets that figure. Where does the 40% figure come from?

It took a bit of digging from my overpaid assistants (what do you MEAN you could make more on unemployment? I AM NOT gonna fire you. You’ll have to quit!), but I finally found an answer.

https://www.kansascityfed.org/oklahomacity/oklahoma-economist/where-are-all-the-workers/

“The unemployment rate alone, however, does not necessarily capture overall labor market conditions in the state, since it measures only the share of the workforce actively looking for work. Once someone stops looking for work, they no longer count as unemployed. As such, it is helpful to look at the labor force participation rate (LFPR) (Chart 2). This rate, which measures the share of the adult population that either is working or actively looking for work, currently is 60.6% in Oklahoma, only slightly lower than in January 2020 (60.8%). Again, this is in sharp contrast with the nation, where the LFPR remains 1.7 percentage points lower than pre-pandemic levels. This means not only are there considerably fewer unemployed workers in Oklahoma actively looking for work than in most other states, but there also are fewer people “on the sidelines” who have stopped looking for work.”

To me, this has been the issue in Oklahoma for at least the last 40 years. I’m gonna give this one to Stitt, I think his figures are accurate, and while his analysis of the problem is debatable, I think he is right in focusing on this number. The low unemployment figure is nice, but in the end, if 40% of eligible workers aren’t working, I feel we have a problem. It would be different if the economy were so robust people could support their wives, but that is not the case. 56% of “eligible” women are in the workforce. 48.1% of Oklahoma women are married (no wonder I can’t find a date).

More digging finally gets me a vague percentage of how many women are stay-at-home moms in Oklahoma. https://eyeonhousing.org/2012/12/top-2012-posts-the-geography-of-stay-at-home-moms/

Between 28% and 33%. So either no more than a third can afford to stay home or no more than a third choose to stay home. This still leaves us a very rough percentage of 20+ % of people who could in theory be working, but are not.

I’ll end my analysis of that point on that note.

Once again, if this claim is true, we should be in high cotton. After some substantial digging, I honestly have NO IDEA where he gets this figure from. After doing a bit of digging I find https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/economic-profiles/oklahoma/

Looking up those stats and doing some quick Tired Blogger math, I find that (assuming my math is correct) the Oklahoma economy did IN FACT grow pretty substantially. Having said that, if my math is right, everyone should have $300 more in their pocket from last year, not $3000. I also saw what the biggest industries in Oklahoma are. I am now officially depressed. Look it up yourself, if you figure out why I’m depressed, please leave comments below.

Right now I find myself on a teeter-totter with Stitt. I find myself agreeing with one point he has made, how about the last claim? The state achieved a historic amount of savings, an amount of $2.8 billion, as of August 3, 2022.

Frankly, I’m unimpressed. Nothing to do with Stitt, but the richest man (and family…whatever) in Oklahoma is worth over 20 billion. So one family can accumulate 20 billion while the state can only accumulate 2.8? Not impressed Oklahoma.

Personally though, I don’t give credit to Stitt for this budget surplus. Here is why.

According to thenormantrascript.com “It’s true that Oklahoma has higher revenue and more savings this year after past budget gaps, but injections of federal relief money into the economy and swings in the energy industry have played contributing roles.

“Under Gov. Mary Fallin, the state faced a $1.3-billion budget gap for the 2017 fiscal year and an $878-million hole for 2018 after years of tax cuts.

“The Oklahoma Legislature passed a rare tax increase on oil and gas production that Fallin signed into law in 2018, which helped replenish state coffers.

“But Oklahoma had to declare a revenue failure under Stitt in 2020 after energy prices plummeted and businesses shut down in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Bolstered by pandemic relief money and rebounding oil and gas prices, the Oklahoma Legislature now has a record $10.49 billion to spend next fiscal year, including nearly $1.3 billion in carryover funds from previous years.

“According to numbers provided by Stitt’s reelection campaign, Oklahoma will have about $2.5 billion in unused and reserve funds at the end of the 2022 fiscal year.”

This is confirmed by readfrontier.org.

We have high oil prices and Federal Covid assistance to think for the surplus.

Kudos to Stitt for having one foot in reality, but I don’t accept that the Oklahoma economy is improving, at least not drastically. The industries that are the engine of the Oklahoma economy don’t bring me much hope that there will be more money for the poor, or that education is going to improve, or that people are going to be any kinder or more respectful to each other.

That’s all for now. I don’t know if I’ll get another one out before Christmas, so merry Christmas everyone. If I do, I’ll have something vaguely Christmas themed. Ideas welcome, leave some below in the comments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ROP5Z-8Jl0