XPost: talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns, soc.retirement   
   From: Brewster4@yahoo.com   
      
   Red America’s Employment Gap Gets Larger the Closer You Look   
   States and metro areas that voted for Donald Trump have far lower labor-force   
   participation than Democratic-leaning parts of the country   
      
   By Bob Davis   
   Mar 6, 2018 12:17 pm ET   
   93 COMMENTS   
   The economic gap between blue and red America may be wider than you think.   
      
   Late last year, the Institute of International Finance compared the labor-   
   force participation rates between states that voted for Donald Trump (red)   
   and those that voted for Hillary Clinton (blue) and found blue-state   
   participation was about 1.5 percentage points higher. The reason: Blue states   
   were more likely to be heavy in job-creating industries like technology and   
   finance, while red states were more tethered to slower-growing sectors like   
   retail and manufacturing.   
      
   But the analysis needed to be refined, says the IIF’s chief economist Robin   
   Brooks. Big coastal cities have become job-producing engines and many of them   
   are in the blue states. A state-by-state analysis simply could reflect the   
   economic power of the coastal centers.   
      
   In a new analysis, the IIF, a banking trade association in Washington D.C.,   
   examined the impact of urban centers across the nation. Red states had 51 of   
   the nation’s largest 86 metropolitan areas. Of those red-state metro areas,   
   31 voted for Mrs. Clinton—making them “blue islands,” in a red sea, as Mr.   
   Brooks calls them.   
      
   The IIF re-ran their analysis by assigning those blue islands to a   
   reconstituted blue America. That produced even more dramatic results: The gap   
   in labor-force participation roughly doubled to about four percentage points.   
      
   Blue America's Labor-Force Lead   
   The political divide in who works is even wider when Democratic-leaning metro   
   areas are included withblue states in "Blue America."   
      
   To Mr. Brooks, the results help explain the firm support red America has for   
   Mr. Trump’s protectionist and anti-immigration policies. “To unite the   
   country, you need to supercharge the economy. Then the labor market will get   
   tighter and you’ll suck in workers on the fringe,” he says. “Much of red   
   America isn’t participating in the jobs growth. They’re on the fringe.”   
      
   Protectionist policies promise to stop jobs from moving overseas and   
   immigration restrictions block job competitors from moving nearby. In places   
   where job growth is slow—red America—that has an obvious appeal, he says.   
      
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