Email: Graph of the Day: Oklahoma After Right-to-Work

Graph of the Day: Oklahoma After Right-to-Work
	It's difficult to prove much of anything when it comes to right-to-work laws. Most states that have such laws have had them for decades, making it hard to figure out what effects the laws have. Just about the only available contemporary example of a new right-to-work law that can give us any data is Oklahoma, which implemented a right-to-work law in late September of 2001.

Let's see how that worked out for them.

(Data from Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The blue line on top is the total number of jobs in Minnesota. The red line is the total number of jobs in Oklahoma. The relative position of the two lines isn't too important; Minnesota has more people, so it has more jobs.

What is interesting is how quickly each line changes. In particular, Oklahoma's job count after right-to-work flattens out. Minnesota's does, too, in part because we'd all started to weather the first Bush recession. The point to remember is that right-to-work didn't actually increase Oklahoma's number of jobs in any meaningful way.

There are plenty of other factors that affect jobs in a state beyond right-to-work, of course. That's kind of the point of this graph – the claims of right-to-work proponents that the law would drive up employment don't actually have a basis in reality.

There will be plenty of graphs thrown around on both sides of this debate as the legislative session proceeds. Just remember that the burden of proof is on those advocating for right-to-work. They're the ones claiming that it will increase jobs, so they're the ones that should offer the data to support that claim. Unfortunately for them, the real data don't give them much to work with. And we can always come back to the question, “What about Oklahoma?”

For more on this issue, see "Oklahoma Revisited"

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Email: Graph of the Day: Oklahoma After Right-to-Work

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