Harris Thankfully Inherits Biden's Economy in North Carolina
The vice president has essentially closed the gap with Donald Trump in this critical state, where jobs are being created by the thousands.
Matthew Winkler
August 22, 2024 at 6:30 AM EDT
The text is below but the article includes graphs that will not easily be copied, so it is better to read this at the source, here (should be read without a paywall):
bloomberg.com
Ever since President Joe Biden told Americans last month he wasn't running for re-election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him, public opinion has shifted. For the first time, Democrats are leading in most of the seven so-called swing states -- Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin -- that will determine the 47th occupant of the White House.
Unlike Biden, whose seeming frailty was assailed at the expense of his domestic and foreign affairs achievements, Harris is viewed more favorably on the economy than former president Donald Trump, according to the Financial Times. The FT's latest poll follows a Wall Street Journal report in April that called the American economy the “ envy of the world.”
Perhaps nowhere is the race for the Oval Office more transformed than in North Carolina. The ninth-most populous state of almost 11 million people no longer is seen as impregnable for Trump and could for the second time this century deliver a Democrat to the Electoral College the way it did for Barack Obama in 2008. The issue for Harris is that North Carolina's prevailing media narrative is no different from other swing states, omitting superior growth in gross domestic product, jobs and personal income the past three-and-a-half years that Tar Heels never experienced when Trump was president, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The contrast between the Biden and Trump administrations is most apparent in the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s US Coincident Indexes that track each state based on nonfarm payroll employment, average hours worked in manufacturing by production workers, the unemployment rate and wage and salary disbursements deflated by the Consumer Price Index. By these metrics, North Carolina's economic improvement is 50% greater than it was under Trump. Not only did unemployment drop to a 21st century-low of 3.3% last year, it also was 0.23 percentage point less than the national average and significantly better than the 0.08 percentage point favorable margin that prevailed between 2017 and 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Pulling AwayNorth Carolina's economy has grown at a much faster rate than the rest of the country coming out of the pandemic
Sources: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Bloomberg
Note: Indexes normalized to a start date of 2017
Such a tight labor market no doubt sparked North Carolina's record personal income growth this year, which has expanded 1.35 percentage points more on average than the rest of the country since Biden took office in January 2021. That’s markedly better than the 0.54 percentage point average annual premium under Trump. With Biden, North Carolina's bank and insurance sector, which contributed $66.6 billion to North Carolina’s gross domestic product in 2023 and ranked No. 7 among the 50 states, has grown 2 percentage points faster than the US average. That's a significant turnaround from the Trump presidency, when the state's financial industry was falling behind the country at a 0.4 percentage point rate annually, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Incomes Are GrowingEarnings in North Carolina have risen faster than the rest of the country under Joe Biden
Sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bloomberg
Note: Indexes normalized to start date of 2017
The Biden boom isn't limited to North Carolina finance. The part of the state's economy tied to information technology is growing 2.5 percentage points faster than the rest of the country -- even California -- since Biden entered the White House. With Trump, North Carolina IT growth trailed the US average by 2.4 percentage points, Bloomberg data show.
A little reported fact in any of the polls showing Biden's low approval is the reality that earnings have boomed. In North Carolina alone, data as of March showed personal incomes were growing the fastest relative to the nation since at least 1948. So although surveys may show voters are unhappy with the economy, primarily because of the surge in consumer prices that stemmed from supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, it’s impossible to say that the historic policy achievements of the Biden administration – of which Harris was intimately involved - aren’t helping Americans, and especially North Carolinians.
Tight Labor MarketNorth Carolina's jobless fell to the lowest this century under Joe Biden
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bloomberg
As my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Liam Denning recently highlighted, the single largest investment in the burgeoning US green energy supply chain – made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) - involves a construction site the size of 121 football fields near Greensboro, North Carolina, where Toyota Corp. is building a facility that in just a few years could employ more than 5,000 people making enough batteries to power half-a-million new electric vehicles each year. And just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Natron Energy, a startup developing high-tech batteries and whose backers include Chevron and United Airlines, will invest $1.4 billion to build its first big plant in North Carolina. All told, some $20 billion in cleantech investments have been announced in North Carolina under Biden, trailing only Georgia and Michigan among US states, according to Denning.
Now that she is the Democratic Party's standard bearer, Harris, like Biden, wants to protect Americans from Trump and his enablers calling for tariffs on foreign-made goods by making the cost of living, especially housing, more affordable. Her policies are an extension of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 that sparked the labor market recovery to the longest period of low unemployment since the 1960s; the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 that paved the way for road and bridge building; the Chips and Science Act of 2022 subsidizing the manufacturing of semiconductors inside the US; and 2022’s IRA (Harris cast the deciding vote) that includes financing for clean energy projects promising to create even more jobs.
Closing the GapPolls show Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are effectively tied in North Carolina
Sources: Real Clear Politics, Bloomberg
Trump has suggested that if reelected he would repeal tax breaks for clean-energy production enabled by the IRA and responsible for creating thousands of jobs for Tar Heels. No wonder the polls show North Carolinians swinging toward Harris in 2024. “ I have that 2008 feeling,” North Carolina Democratic Governor Roy Cooper told Bloomberg News this week, referencing the last year in which the Democratic nominee — then Barack Obama — carried the state. |
