Numbers don’t lie: Kansas is far behind most neighboring states in job growth

Gov. Sam Brownback has tried to brush away the increasingly clear prospect that his Kansas tax experiment is failing by saying that it will just take time for his idea to start working. He has compared it with surgery: Deep cuts in income taxes require a period of healing.

But the procedure seems to show signs of lingering infection.

In order for Brownback’s tax plan to offset deep drops in state revenues, new jobs need to start coming to Kansas in large numbers almost immediately. That hasn’t happened. What have occurred are steep drops in state revenues, which figure to result in further cuts in state services absent some kind of drastic economic turnaround.

The latest job numbers show that Kansas trails behind all neighboring states except Nebraska in job growth over the last year. 

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put its jobs report out on Monday, showing that Kansas increased 13,800 nonfarm jobs in July compared with the same month a year ago. That sounds good, but consider the rate of growth in Colorado (65,600 jobs), Missouri (53,600 jobs) and Oklahoma (30,200 jobs) over that same period of time. Only Nebraska is adding fewer jobs than Kansas (2,800 jobs).

True, states like Missouri have little more than twice the population of Kansas, so total job growth in Missouri should outpace that of Kansas in most circumstances. But Missouri’s job-growth rate has nearly quadrupled that of Kansas, suggesting that Brownback’s tax cuts have not, and may not, produce the type of new jobs to the Sunflower State that were billed as a reason to adopt what even he admits is an experiment.