PolitiFact Tracks Walker's Big Jobs-Promise Fail

After three years of following Walker's jobs' performance, PolitiFact posts another set of sluggish figures with the same old song:

...43 percent of the way toward the 250,000 mark with 12 months remaining in his term. You can see our updated graphic tracking progress on Walker's promise here.

This was Walker's biggest strategic stumble - - putting a number on something he could not control and making it his signature promise. Any politician will tell you that is a mistake just waiting to explode.

It's like proposal writing or contracting. The road-builders do it all the time and end up with completion bonuses: Under-promise/over-deliver. How did he and all those apparatchiks around him get that so wrong? 

And, yes, for the record, it is the same old song. Here's how PolitiFact put it last summer: 

Final numbers for 2012 show a long way to go 

Updated: Friday, July 5th, 2013 | By James B. Nelson 

We now have the numbers for the half-way point in our effort to measure Gov. Scott Walker's top campaign promise from 2010 -- that the state would create 250,000 private sector jobs by the end of his four-year term. 

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics on June 27, 2013 released data for job creation in 2012, the second full year of Walker's term. The report said that Wisconsin added a total of 32,282 private sector jobs last year. 

That compares with 29,800 jobs in 2011, bringing the two-year total to 62,082 jobs. 

At the halfway mark of his term, that meant Walker was only about one fourth of the way -- or 187,918 jobs -- from his goal.

Here's additional data, commentary and a look forward posted here Wednesday:

...Walker's promise is 90,000 new jobs off its scheduled completion - - and at the current pace he'd finish his term overseeing the addition of 130,000 new jobs, or 52% of the pledge. 

In business, academic or fund-raising settings, 52% would rate an "F," as in "Fail," and "Fired."