CORRECTION of media release dated June 24, 2009
The state recently announced that its $176 million “stimulus package” has created or saved 3,236 jobs in the first three months, spending about eight percent of the money to date. But an Associated Press analysis now finds that those jobs only provided an average of 35 hours of work apiece. When converted to full-time jobs over a year, the number of jobs shrinks to just 54. Once all the funds are spent, assuming the same rate of job creation, the AP analysis finds that it will have created or saved the equivalent of just 688 full-time jobs for one year.
What the state still hasn’t told citizens is that Oregon risks losing one hundred times as many jobs if two “anti-stimulus” tax bills take effect.
HB 2649 would raise the top personal income tax rate, costing 36,000 jobs, or about 30,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
HB 3405 would boost the top corporate income tax rate and base the corporate minimum tax on gross Oregon sales, costing 43,000 jobs, or about 40,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
These projections are made by two respected private economists, Bill Conerly and Randall Pozdena, respectively. Their projections can be found here:
Taxing the “Wealthy” More Will Cost 36,000 Oregon Jobs
By Bill Conerly
Raising Oregon’s Corporate Income Tax Rate Will Cost 43,000 Oregon Jobs
By Randall Pozdena
Cascade’s earlier media release, dated June 24, 2009 suggested that the two tax measures would destroy ten to twenty times as many jobs as the stimulus project had created, but that calculation assumed that the 3,236 jobs created were full-time. Making the same adjustment to our analysis of how many jobs will be lost to the two tax measures, we conclude that 70,000 jobs will be lost, which is more than 100 times as many jobs as will be created by the stimulus package. Significantly, those 688 jobs are only for one year. The tax measure job losses build up to the 70,000 number over the next few years, but they are assumed to continue on into the future as long as the higher tax rates stay in effect.
Sources:
SB338 Progress Report on Oregon’s Stimulus Package, Oregon Department of Administrative Services, June 17, 2009
SPIN METER: ‘Help Wanted’ counting stimulus jobs, Associated Press, Ryan Kost, July 29, 2009
