Jobs in Pennsylvania

In the process of composing my post for The American Street tomorrow, I realized that I skipped over a very important swing state, Pennsylvania. While Pennsylvania voted for Gore in 2000, Bush nevertheless enacted steel tariffs in an effort to court voters in this swing state. I suspect that Pennsylvania residents are not impressed: their state has lost 146,400 jobs since Bush took office, a 2.56% decline:

Gore carried this state 51%-47% in 2000; based on the jobs picture, Kerry should have no problem bettering that margin in 2004.

AB

P.S. Anyone notice how I managed to mention the steel tariffs without quipping that they didn’t appear to do much for the jobs picture in Pennsylvania?