Tag: Politifact

Facebook Claim On W.Va. Senator Miscasts His Remarks On Stimulus Aid

As the coronavirus pandemic forces indefinite business closures, lawmakers are deciding what they can do to keep the economy afloat. One proposal is to send Americans $1,000 checks. 

A March 18 Facebook post, shared more than 6,000 times, takes aim at Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and his views on the proposal.

The post, in a public Facebook group called West Virginia Citizens Against Joe Manchin, says the senator does not believe that West Virginians should receive these checks. The post says, “Senator Joe Manchin hit (an) all time low saying seniors and the disabled did not need the relief package $1000 on Fox News.”

Did Manchin say he doesn’t want seniors and disabled people in West Virginia to receive the relief checks? 

Not quite. The post leaves out important context. Manchin did say he believes the aid should be targeted to workers and businesses suffering a financial hit, such as lost income, due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Manchin was interviewed on Fox News on March 18. In the interview, he shared his view about the best way to target federal expenditures. He said that instead of sending $1,000 to those already receiving money from the government through worker’s compensation, disability, Social Security, Medicare and welfare — people who will not be seeing their incomes cut — it would be better to invest in existing programs designed to support families who have lost their paychecks due to the economic crisis, especially through unemployment insurance. 

Here’s what Manchin told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer:

“They don’t need to send me $1,000, and I hope, Bill, they don’t need to send you $1,000. There’s a lot of people still working who have paychecks. There’s people getting their workers’ compensation, there are people getting their disability from Social Security, Social Security checks, Medicare, people on welfare. None of their lives are going to change from what it’s been, except the inconvenience of not being able to socialize. 

“The people we’ve got to get money to, Bill, (are) the people who have no paychecks now because we shut down everything. That’s where we need to go. And it has to be through the unemployment comp(ensation) programs we already have in place. That does more for a long-term period than anything we do with a short-term check we send one time.”

Manchin’s office pointed us to a press release in which the senator explained that sending $1,000 checks to government employees who are still being paid does not solve the problem that unemployed workers are facing. 

In the release, Manchin said, “We can support American workers by removing the waiting period for those applying for unemployment, raising the dollar amount, and creating a small-business stimulus. But we do not need to be in the business of sending $1,000 checks to individuals like myself who are continuing to get a paycheck and not seeing negative financial impacts.”

Our Ruling

The Facebook post in the public group West Virginia Citizens Against Joe Manchin said, “Senator Joe Manchin hit an all time low saying seniors and the disabled did not need the relief package $1000 on Fox News.”

That’s misleading. Manchin said that federal government compensation should be targeted at those who have suffered a direct financial hit due to business closures, including the newly unemployed.

Manchin said that workers who remain employed would not fit those criteria for receiving checks. Nor would people whose income consists of government checks that remain steady and reliable, such as those who live on Social Security and/or disability checks.

This is a nuanced position involving how to structure government aid, rather than a shot at seniors and the disabled, as the post suggests. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details, so we rate it Half True.

This article was originally published by PolitiFact.

Is West Virginia Short Of 20,000 Skilled Workers Its Economy Needs?

Is West Virginia falling significantly behind in the job skills required for today’s economy? West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee said so in an address to students at Musselman High School in Berkeley County.

“In West Virginia, we have 20,000 jobs in which we don’t have skilled workers,” Gee told students at the high school.

Gee’s office told PolitiFact West Virginia that they could not point to the original source of the statistic. However, we were able to reverse-engineer data that falls short of Gee’s number.

This gets a bit complicated, so bear with us. Here’s the overall concept. First, we’ll estimate the total number of job openings in West Virginia that require skilled workers. Then we’ll look into how hard these jobs are to fill, based on the educational shortcomings of West Virginia’s workforce.  

How Many Job Openings In West Virginia Require Advanced Skills?

On the job openings side, Brian Lego, a research assistant professor at WVU’s College of Business and Economics, suggested we look at data produced on an experimental basis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal government’s chief agency for employment statistics.

This data in question is a spinoff of the longstanding Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which produces monthly estimates of job openings, hires, and employee departures on a national basis. For several years, the bureau has also produced an experimental study of this data on a state-by-state basis, which is what Lego was referring to.

We looked at the most recent data for West Virginia, which covers the first six months of 2019. We found that in each of those six months, West Virginia had 38,000 job openings. (BLS acknowledges that this is an estimate, though the agency says it isn’t sure what the margin of error is.)

This 38,000 figure represents all job openings in West Virginia — not necessarily those requiring advanced skills.

However, we found a way to estimate the percentage requiring advanced skills, using data in a report published by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. The report is from 2010, but it offered projections for the share of jobs in every state by 2018 that would require various levels of educational attainment, so it should offer a rough guide.

For West Virginia, the report said, 9% of jobs would be open to high school dropouts, 38% would require a high school degree, 12% would require some college but not a college degree, 15% would require an associate’s degree, 17% would require a bachelor’s degree, and 8% would require a master’s degree or higher.

All told, the Georgetown data sees 25% of jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher. And 25% of 38,000 job openings in West Virginia works out to 9,500 job openings in any given month that require a bachelor’s degree. 

How Big Are The Educational Shortcomings In West Virginia’s Workforce?

This 9,500 figure refers to the number of high-skill job openings in West Virginia — the demand side. What about the supply side — the share of West Virginia workers who have the necessary skills to fill those jobs?

We found a way to estimate that number, too. 

Statistics from the U.S. Education Department show that in 2016, about 21% of West Virginians age 25 and up had a bachelor’s degree. Meanwhile, in October 2019, West Virginia had 38,052 unemployed workers. 

If one assumes that this group of unemployed workers is a representative cross-section of the state’s educational attainment patterns, this would mean there are just under 8,000 unemployed West Virginians who could fill a job requiring a bachelor’s degree. But in reality, better-educated workers tend to be more likely to be employed, meaning the actual number of unemployed workers with a bachelor’s degree is probably well below 8,000. 

Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist, told PolitiFact West Virginia that a reasonable guess is probably 4,000.

So of the 9,500 West Virginia job openings requiring a bachelor’s degree, qualified workers who are currently unemployed could potentially fill a 4,000 of those. That leaves 4,500 bachelor’s-level jobs unfilled. 

And that’s quite a bit smaller than Gee’s 20,000 figure.

Some Caveats

We should emphasize that our estimates involve a lot of moving parts, each with a source of statistical error.

We also focused on bachelor’s-level jobs. If we were to instead define “skilled” positions as requiring at least some college experience, the supply of skilled jobs could go as high as 53%, according to the Georgetown University data. That works out to 21,400 jobs requiring advanced skills, rather than 9,500. Using this broader number could make Gee’s figures closer to accurate.

Finally, we should note that in the Georgetown comparison, West Virginia ranks 51st in the nation — dead last among the 50 states and the District of Columbia — in the percentage of jobs requiring advanced skills. So West Virginia may require advanced skills to fill many of its jobs, but the pressure to fill these advanced-skill jobs is weaker in West Virginia than it is in every other state.

“Gee’s argument could have been better supported by focusing on the deficit of college educated workers in West Virginia compared to the rest of the U.S. — 21% versus 31%,” Sinclair said. “That seems to be a really big problem. That might actually be the driver of West Virginia’s ranking in terms of jobs requiring college degrees: Employers go where the workers are.”

Our Ruling

Gee said, “In West Virginia, we have 20,000 jobs in which we don’t have skilled workers.”

Gee has put his finger on what experts say is a genuine concern for West Virginia — the mismatch between educational attainment and skills requirements for job openings — but he’s overestimated the specific figure.

He was unable to back up this figure, and when we tried to come up with an estimate, we found that the number is probably around 4,500.

We rate his statement Half True.

Does West Virginia Rank Sixth In The Nation In At-Risk Youth?

Woody Thrasher, a Republican who is challenging West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice in the 2020 GOP primary, took to Twitter to call out the state’s level of at-risk youth on his opponent’s watch.

“‘West Virginia is sixth overall in the average number of at-risk youth.’ Let’s turn this around and grow our workforce by supporting post-secondary training programs. #TimeToGetToWorkWV #wvpol,” Thrasher tweeted.

Here, we won’t address whether or how much post-secondary training programs can help at-risk youth. Instead, we’ll focus on the credibility of his statement that “West Virginia is sixth overall in the average number of at-risk youth.”

There are certainly warning signs about West Virginia’s youth, many of them traceable to the opioid crisis. We have rated as True the statement that West Virginia “has the highest overdose rate per capita of any state in our nation.”

The drug epidemic is “the driving force in (the) child welfare crisis,” the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources said in a statement in February 2018. The department said that the opioid crisis has made it difficult to help get children back on their feet and is making them more prone to mental-health issues. 

But How Does West Virginia Compare Nationally?

In his tweet, Thrasher linked to a July 18 editorial in the Exponent-Telegram newspaper of Clarksburg. The editorial includes the exact sentence Thrasher quoted, and it says the source is the most recent edition of an annual survey by the website WalletHub. Thrasher’s campaign also confirmed to PolitiFact West Virginia that the WalletHub survey was the source.

As Thrasher indicated, the WalletHub report does show West Virginia ranking sixth in at-risk youth, behind Louisiana, the District of Columbia, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Nevada. 

The website determined the overall rankings by weighting 15 different metrics. They include the population aged 18 to 24 years who are not attending school, not working and have no degree beyond a high school diploma; the labor force participation rate, the poverty rate, and the homelessness rate for the population aged 16 to 24 years; the rate of teen pregnancy; the percentage of those under age 21 who are detained in residential facilities in the criminal justice system; and the percentage of youth who are overweight, who use drugs, who have alcohol problems, or who have clinical depression.

We reached out to several of the academic advisers to the WalletHub study. The only one to answer us was Rigaud Joseph, an assistant professor of social work at California State University San Bernardino. However, Joseph said that he “did not have any statistical input in the study. WalletHub decided on the criteria for the rankings.”

So we turned to independent experts, who said that WalletHub’s study was credible.

“The WalletHub methodology seems fine and it generates a credible ranking of states,” said Gary Natriello, a professor of educational research, sociology, and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. “Other rankings would be possible if different combinations of indicators were used, but West Virginia would likely be among the states with the most at-risk youth, as Thrasher’s statement suggests.”

Our Ruling

Thrasher said that “West Virginia is sixth overall in the average number of at-risk youth.”

He is correctly citing a study by the website WalletHub that came up with its ranking by using 15 metrics on youth health, employment, and education. An expert said this is a reasonable way to compare states against each other, though it’s hardly the only way; the use of other data points or weighting of the factors could produce somewhat different rankings.

We rate the statement Mostly True.

This article was originally published by PolitiFact.

Shelley Moore Capito Correct On Suicides In West Virginia

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., recently sought to raise awareness about suicide, focusing on its toll in her home state.

“On average, one person dies by suicide every 22 hours in West Virginia,” Capito said in a Facebook post on Sept. 19.

She went on to note her efforts with two Senate colleagues, Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Doug Jones, D-Ala., to pass the Suicide Training and Awareness Nationally Delivered for Universal Prevention, or STANDUP, Act, which would expand efforts to educate young people about mental health resources.

Is Capito correct about the frequency of suicide in West Virginia? Capito’s office did not respond to an inquiry for this article, but we were able to find statistics that backed up her assertion.

We turned to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s WISQARS database, which includes data as recently as 2017. The database shows that there were 393 suicides in West Virginia. 

With 8,760 hours in a year, that comes out to about one suicide every 22.3 hours, making Capito’s statistic correct.

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the 10th most common cause of death in West Virginia. It ranks even higher for certain age groups, ranking second among those between 15 and 34 and fourth among those between 35 and 54. On a per capita basis, West Virginia has the eighth-highest rate of suicide in the nation.

We checked with both the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and University of Denver associate professor of social work Stacey Freedenthal, a specialist in suicide, and both agreed that there are no complications with the data that would undercut Capito’s statement.

Our Ruling

Capito said, “On average, one person dies by suicide every 22 hours in West Virginia.” This statistic is backed up by official data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so we rate her statement True.

This article was originally published by PolitiFact.

Has West Virginia’s Economy Boomed Since Trump, Justice Took Office?

President Trump has established a close relationship with West Virginia, the state that gave him his second-widest margin of victory in 2016. 

On July 21, Trump tweeted a boast about the state’s recent economic success:

“The Great State of West Virginia is producing record setting numbers and doing really well. When I became President, it was practically shut down and closed for business. Not anymore!”

Because the tweet’s vague phrasing is hard to measure mathematically, we won’t be rating the statement on the Truth-O-Meter. Instead, we will look at some key economic factors to get a rough sense of whether the state’s economic performance has turned on a dime since 2017, the year that both Trump and his ally, Gov. Jim Justice, took office.

Broadly speaking, we found that the state’s economic performance has improved during that period — but for several key statistics, that improvement continued the ongoing trend lines in place before Trump and Justice took office. (Justice was elected governor as a Democrat, but he switched to the Republican Party in 2017.)

For instance, here’s a look at the state’s unemployment rate since 2007. As with the other charts below, the red portions denote the tenures of Trump and Justice.

West Virginia’s unemployment rate in August 2019 was 4.6%, the lowest since the start of the Great Recession, and it has fallen from 5.3% in January 2017, when Trump and Justice took office.

However, as the chart shows, the state unemployment rate also fell under President Barack Obama and Justice’s Democratic predecessor, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. Indeed, the country’s unemployment rate as a whole has declined during that period, so this pattern was not unique to West Virginia.

We also looked at median household income in West Virginia:

This chart also shows good news for West Virginia — modest gains above the rate of inflation in 2017 and 2018. 

Here too, though, inflation-adjusted median income also rose in West Virginia in 2015 and 2016, before Trump or Justice took office. And the pattern in West Virginia was similar to what it was for the nation as a whole.

Here’s a look at food stamp use — one of the main statistics that measures the extent of poverty in the state and the nation.

The number of West Virginians on food stamps has declined since the start of 2017, which is positive news. However, the decline began several years before Trump and Justice took office, and it mirrors the pattern nationally.

Meanwhile, here’s a chart showing the change in quarterly gross domestic product for West Virginia. That’s a measure of all economic output in the state, compared to the previous quarter.

The quarterly GDP growth is good news, too, for West Virginia. In six quarters, the state saw an increase, compared to three quarters in which there was a decline. The quarterly increases ranged from about 2% to almost 10%.

That said, “it’s hard to attribute economic growth to any president’s policies,” said Eric Bowen, an energy economics specialist at West Virginia University. “In the case of West Virginia’s economic growth, I think you would have to consider the trends prior to the changeover in administration.” 

Perhaps the most striking improvement occurred in the labor-force participation rate. This is a statistic that calculates the percentage of West Virginia’s civilian, non-institutionalized population that is either working or looking for work. Economists say that a higher percentage is always preferable because it shows that a smaller share of the population is unable or unwilling to work.

Here’s a chart showing West Virginia’s labor force participation rate since 2007, about a year before the Great Recession hit.

The chart shows that prior to 2017, West Virginia’s labor-force participation rate was generally falling or stagnant. But since early 2017, it has risen consistently, even if not to pre-recession levels. 

This improvement is especially notable since the labor force participation rate for the country as a whole has been stable even as West Virginia’s has been rising.

However, it’s worth noting that after rough stability in population in the first half of the decade, West Virginia’s population shrank by about 25,000 people between 2016 and 2018. So while employment did increase, the rise in the labor force participation rate was magnified by the shrinkage in population. 

Having a shrinking population “doesn’t look so good for the economic outcomes in the state,” said Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist.

Finally, we looked at data for a specific industry that has been a key focus of policy attention for both Trump and Justice — mining and resource extraction. Both Trump and Justice have advocated easing environmental and regulatory restrictions on the mining and oil and gas sectors. West Virginia ranks near the top nationally in coal and is also a significant natural gas producer.

This chart shows the amount of economic output every quarter from mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction in the state:

The economic output has been on an upward trajectory since the start of 2017, though it also rose — somewhat more gradually — for several years prior.

However, it’s worth noting that the recent gains for the extraction sector are limited. Here’s a chart showing the number of employees in the extraction sector:

In other words, the sector has gained a few thousand jobs since its low point in 2016, but its current level remains far below its pre-recession level and even well below its peak in late 2011 and early 2012.

“For a variety of reasons — mostly due to low natural gas prices and a falloff in coal exports — the election year of 2016 was a particularly bad year for the state’s coal mining industry, and we have seen some rebound since then,” Bowen said. “But mining employment and production are still well below what they were as recently as 2011.”

The Bottom Line

Key economic statistics show that West Virginia is on an upward course. The most impressive turnaround since Trump and Justice entered office has been in the labor force participation rate.

Other statistics also show gains during their tenures, but in many cases those continued the trend lines seen under their predecessors, calling into question how much credit either can claim for the economic progress.

This article was originally published by PolitiFact.

Are 1,600 New Coal-Fired Power Plants Being Constructed Today?

The president of the United Mine Workers of America  — a union representing coal miners, many of them in West Virginia — sees a future for coal in electricity generation despite concern that coal’s carbon emissions could bring about climate change. 

In a Sept. 4 speech at the National Press Club in Washington, the union’s president, Cecil E. Roberts, touted the number of coal-fired power plants being constructed internationally.

Roberts said: “We need to develop technology to remove carbon from the burning of coal, or you’re never — write that word down — never going to resolve climate change. Never. Why is that? There are 1,600 — 1,600 — new coal-fired power plants being constructed as I speak around the world.”

That’s a large number. Is it correct? We took a closer look. (The union did not respond to requests for comment.)

We found a New York Times article published on July 1, 2017, that said, “Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries.”

At the very least, the 1,600 figure may be outdated, since it’s more than two years old. So we took a closer look at the sourcing.

The article attributed this data to the Global Coal Plant Tracker, portal published by the Global Energy Monitor (GEM). This group, founded in 2007, has board members from such environmental groups as Clean Energy Action, Greenpeace, and the Rainforest Action Network. (The group did not respond to an inquiry for this article.)

As it turns out, the number on the site today is lower. 

The tracker classifies coal-fired units as being under one of the following categories: announced, cancelled, under construction, mothballed, operating, permitted, pre-permit stage, retired, and shelved. So we looked at the figures using a few combinations of these categories.

There are 458 units currently under construction, according to the tracker — well below the 1,600 Roberts cited.

A screen capture shows 458 coal-fired units with site preparation and other activities underway. (Global Coal Plant Tracker)

If you add in those in the permitted or pre-permit stage, the number increases to 903. This number includes plants seeking environmental approvals and other developmental steps, according to the GEM website.

A screen capture shows 903 coal-fired units with permit, pre-permit and under construction. (Global Coal Plant Tracker)

Even if you add in those that are “announced” — which does not really qualify as being “under construction” — it brings the number up to only 1,160. That’s more than one-quarter lower than the figure Roberts cited. (None of these are in the United States.)

Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University, told PolitiFact that other sources of data indicate declining interest in coal-fired power plants.

The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based international organization, found that final investment decisions for new coal power plants have declined steadily between 2015 and 2018.

Gallagher said this separate source of data “reinforces” questions about Roberts’ underlying argument — that the coal power-plant sector is healthy.

Finally, a technical point: The tracker uses the term “units,” while Roberts referred to “plants.” A worldwide survey of coal-fired power plants shows that plants often include several units. 

Our Ruling

Roberts said, “There are 1,600 new coal-fired power plants being constructed as I speak around the world.”

A New York Times article from more than two years ago cited the 1,600 figure, but even then it described units being “planned or under construction” — not strictly under construction. 

In addition, those numbers appear to have shrunk in the succeeding two years. Using the same website as the Times used, there are 458 coal-fired units being built worldwide today, and 903 if you include those in the pre-permitting or permit phase — significantly less than what Roberts indicated. 

We rate his statement Mostly False.

This article was originally published by PolitiFact.

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