N&R fails to fact check competing opinions on employment report

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GREENSBORO, NC -- Last week, the News & Record, in writing of a report (not online) from the Greensboro Partnership (link not provided, malware at source), said:

"Between January, 2008 and July, 2012, Greensboro’s workforce grew by 2.6 percent, meaning that 3,270 more people were working."

The Partnership claimed this growth set Greensboro apart from other North Carolina cities and was a sign that economic development efforts here are working.

But, today, in another News & Record article, local economist Andy Brod challenges the reasons for that growth and says that the bulk of it was due to the city's annexation of over 10,000 people from the Cardinal area. Brod:

Then “boom, (employment) goes up by 5,600 people. That’s clearly the annexation,” Brod said.“That annexation swamps the 3,200 increase that they claimed” in the number of employed people, he said.

Pat Danahy, president of the Partnership, countered:

Pat Danahy, chief executive officer and president of the partnership, said the group recognizes the annexation’s impact.

Still, Danahy said, most of the recent growth happened between 2010 and 2012. The annexation is just an anomaly in the overall employment trend in the city, he said.

“The growth is after the anomaly,” Danahy said. “It’s a pretty strong story from then on out.

Here is where the News & Record's reporting methods confound, although no longer surprise, me. Two people are saying two different things about the same empirical data... and the News & Record leaves it at that; as if the underlying facts of each man's opinions are not of any importance; as if it would be impolite, or something, to fact check them. So I will.
Who do the facts back?
Brod.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was a spike in Greensboro employment after the Cardinal annexation of 5,595. While employment has continued an unsteady climb from there, without the annexation, Greensboro's change in employment for the period the Partnership considered would have been minus 1,772 jobs.

Employment with annexation:


Employment without annexation included:



When Danahy says, "the growth is after [annexation]," he's misleading. There has been growth after the annexation but the growth that made today's numbers higher than 2008, which is what the Partnership was touting as evidence of successful economic development, is directly and solely attributable to annexation. Without it, today's numbers would be lower than 2008. So the Partnership's takeaway, that economic development efforts have resulted in higher employment now than in 2008, is not supported by this data.

Correction (12:52 P.M.)
The graphs originally published in this post had errors of scale because of improper Y axis values. They have been replaced with accurate graphs.