Charleston Gazette-Mail – Longtime readers might remember when West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, members of his administration and state Republican leadership were over the moon about the state being ranked No. 1 in the nation for personal income growth in the first quarter of 2019.
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Justice, now a Republican U.S. senator, linked the success to his policies at the time. Then the revisions came. Turns out, after more accurate data was acquired, the state was 47th in the nation for income growth in the first quarter of 2019, nowhere near No. 1.
One man who saw it coming was West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy senior analyst Sean O’Leary, who warned at the time of the announcement that the numbers were likely inaccurate. He was right. The report had been skewed by temporary pipeline construction jobs. Most of those jobs existed when the initial income survey was taken but were gone by the end of the first fiscal quarter. By the time the full picture was revealed, obviously the news was nothing to celebrate.
