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Corbett's fate rests with economy

Polls show Gov. Corbett is losing his bid for reelection. He's likable enough, coming across as a grandfatherly good guy who may have made some mistakes but didn't mean to hurt anyone. His opponent, Tom Wolf, scores well on the likability meter as well. But this won't be a popularity contest. There are distinctions between the candidates on taxes, education funding, and pension reform that give voters a clear choice. Above them all, though, is the state's economy. It's not doing as well as it should six years after the recession -- and President Obama isn't the only incumbent being blamed.

Corbett can't dodge some pretty damning numbers. For example: The state has gone from producing 1,900 new jobs a month in 2012 to gaining more than 5,000 a month through July of this year, but it was adding 6,600 jobs a month back in 2010. In fact, numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics rank Pennsylvania 50th in the nation in job creation since January 2011. That's a dramatic fall from December 2009 to December 2010, when the state ranked 10th in job creation. Job creation has not made up for job losses. Consequently, despite a lower unemployment rate of 5.7 percent compared with the January 2011 rate of 8.1 percent, Pennsylvania has about 20,000 fewer jobs than in December 2007.

Not only that, the Keystone Research Center says one out of eight employees in the state is underemployed, including many part-time workers who want full-time jobs. The center also reports an overall decline in hourly wages, which has Pennsylvania's full-time workers taking home about $750 to $1,150 less per year than in 2010. That's money that won't be spent on goods and services to boost the economy. Despite his playing point man for the natural-gas industry, Corbett hasn't delivered the goods in bringing jobs to Pennsylvania -- at least not in numbers large enough to make people feel good about the economy. And as we all know, elections are about the economy.

Harold Jackson