Last week, I wrote a blog post (”MEA Misleads on Oklahoma Right-to-Work Numbers”) about Michigan’s largest labor union claiming that since Oklahoma became a right-to-work state in 2001, “10 years later, jobs fell by 25 percent and the number of companies moving there dropped by 33 percent.” As I pointed out, this is false: Jobs in Oklahoma are up 3.8 percent since 2001 while Michigan, on the other hand, lost 13.8 percent of its jobs during the same time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

After the piece was published, the MEA changed its website to offer a citation for its claim. You can see a saved screen-shot of the website before the update here, and click here for the added citation.

The MEA now says, “10 years later, jobs fell by 25 percent and the number of companies moving there dropped by 33 percent, according to economist Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute.” First off, the study it links to was published Aug. 1, 2001, a month before Oklahoma voted to become a right-to-work state. Also, the link is to an edited group of statements from a variety of economists on the left mainly focusing on other reasons Oklahoma is growing besides the right-to-work legislation. Nowhere in the link is “25 percent” or “33 percent” used at all and it does not mention the number of companies that moved to the state.

Mishel, the economist the MEA cites, is the president of the Economic Policy Institute — a union-funded and run think tank. I sent him an email asking where the research is showing a 25 percent drop in jobs or 33 percent drop in companies moving to the state. He wrote back that the MEA has the incorrect link: “The data [is] on pp. 8 and 12 of the 2011 report ‘Does RTW Create Jobs? Answers from Oklahoma.’”

But that study doesn't show a loss of jobs in Oklahoma at all, much less 25 percent. Page 8 of the study he cites shows a loss of manufacturing jobs in Oklahoma, which tracks very closely with what has happened across the country. Page 12 gives us a table of “announced openings” of certain facilities in the state. This tells us little: Michigan was a leader in job announcements and business expansions via the state government’s “economic development” arm for much of the past decade — but lead the nation in jobs loss.

The Oklahoma Council of Policy Affairs critiqued the study on a few fronts. OCPA fellows Scott Moody and Wendy Warcholik explain:

[T]he EPI study did not consider whether Oklahoma’s manufacturing industry may have chosen to boost productivity instead of hiring more workers. Chart 1 shows the growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the manufacturing industry from 2003 to 2010 using a growth index. Oklahoma’s manufacturing GDP has grown 45 percent in that time period, outstripping that of the average manufacturing growth in RTW states (31 percent) and in non-RTW states (22 percent).

This growth in Oklahoma’s manufacturing GDP is a direct result of an increasingly productive workforce. Chart 2 shows the amount of manufacturing GDP per job from 2003 to 2010. In only a few short years, Oklahoma’s productivity growth (67 percent) soon outgrew non-RTW states (55 percent) and in the last few years has even outgrown RTW states (62 percent).

Over the long run, productivity growth is the best way to improve economic performance, for two reasons. First, the higher productivity boosts the spending capacity of businesses and their workers, which filters out to other parts of the economy via “multiplier effects.” Second, increased productivity frees scarce labor to pursue other economic activities. After all, the economy is better off today because Bill Gates is running Microsoft and not toiling away in an old-fashioned steel mill.

More broadly, there is other evidence that RTW has been good to Oklahoma’s economy. Simply look at how people are “voting with their feet.” Using data from the Internal Revenue Service, Chart 3 shows the net migration in Oklahoma of households (as proxied by taxpayers), people (as proxied by exemptions), and income (as proxied by Adjusted Gross Income, or AGI) between 1995 and 2008.

“Still, we get it,” says the group. “Increased manufacturing productivity and population growth mean little to a union employee who is concerned that right-to-work legislation will eventually mean fewer jobs and lower wages to go around. So, let's home in on the most important facts. After Oklahoma passed right to work, the number of jobs in the state grew and wages went up.”

The specifics: “The State Chamber recently reported that Oklahoma’s personal per capita income (PCPI) has grown from $23,517 in 2001 to $35,268 in 2010, a 50 percent growth rate over that period. From 1999 to 2008, Oklahoma had the fourth highest PCPI growth rate in the nation, primarily due to Right to Work.”

As the legislative debate over Michigan becoming a worker freedom state continues, expect to see more distortions. We’ll do our best to keep up with them.

Perhaps the single best single indicator of "quality of life" differences between states is migration. That is, where are people moving from and to, and how many are doing so?

The reasons people move are many, but most can be summed up in one word: opportunity. Among other things, current migration patterns suggest that critics who claim that right-to-work laws reduce economic opportunity have some ‘splainin’ to do.

For years, more people have departed Michigan than came here, a trend that accelerated during the last decade. Things have improved a little bit recently, but Michigan was still the only state in the union to lose population between the 2000 and 2010 Census counts.

Of the nine states that saw the greatest population growth in that decade, six have a right-to-work law and a seventh — Colorado — enjoyed a quasi-RTW status thanks to its "labor peace act," which makes it difficult for unions to extract fee payments from non-members in a workplace. (Right-to-work laws do not affect collective bargaining, other than to prohibit labor contracts that make union dues or fees a condition of employment.)

To be sure, many factors go into individual migration decisions (high growth states also have more days of sunshine than Michigan, for example), but scholarly studies of the issue using sophisticated statistical techniques to isolate the different factors nevertheless suggest that having right-to-work protections for employees has a positive impact on a state’s in-bound migration.

For example, a 2010 study by Mackinac Center for Public Policy adjunct scholar Richard Vedder examined other possible explanations including climate, taxes, population and the “occupational composition of the workforce,” and still concluded, “Without exception, in all the estimations, a statistically significant positive relationship … was observed between the presence of right-to-work laws and net migration.” Mackinac Center analyses of Michigan migration also discovered a “revealed preference” for right-to-work states.

My colleague James Hohman reports that from 2000 to 2009, right-to-work states gained nearly 5 million people from non-right-to-work states. From Census to Census, right-to-work states grew by 15.5 percent, while non-right-to-work states grew by only 6.1 percent. (This includes natural increases and international migration.)

Legislators struggling with the issue now are concerned about the reaction of voters — but those who “vote with their feet” seem to support such a law, a tendency that should frighten right-to-work opponents here given Michigan’s recent population decline. To emphasize this point, falling population due to people seeking greener economic pastures is not good for home values here.

As those individuals who have get-up-and-go increasingly choose to do just that, it also drains the state of their talents and wealth. The migrants stop buying at local stores and paying taxes to the state and local governments. The Tax Foundation estimated that from 2007 to 2008 Michigan lost $2.5 billion in gross income as a result of net outbound migration, second only to California.

And then there are the personal costs. How many parents and grandparents in recent years have had to sadly wave goodbye as they watched their children’s U-Hauls begin the long journey to Florida or Texas?

Michigan needs bold steps to reverse a depressing trend of outbound migration, and a right-to-work law just might do it. Nothing would send a more resounding message to potential investors and job providers that Michigan really has cleaned up its act and is well and truly open for business.