As Texas goes?

Rick Sloan, communications director for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, gave an update on the nation’s unemployment picture to a group of teachers unions’ communications specialists today, and it wasn’t good.
Another 60,000 and 200,000 education jobs are projected to be lost in the United States this year, he said, as 30 million Americans remain either unemployed or underemployed. That’s one fifth of the national workforce, he said.

Sloan was in Austin to address a session of the National Education Association’s PR Council, meeting at the Driskill Hotel.

He didn’t discuss Texas’ education jobs’ outlook specifically, but Texas ultimately could have a major effect on the national figures. A lot will depend on how deeply the Legislature and the governor cut into the public education budget to bridge a revenue shortfall as high as $27 billion. One “doomsday” budget proposal laid out last week in the House would slash as many as 100,000 public school jobs in Texas alone during the next twoyear budget cycle.

That budgetary plan was based on Gov. Perry’s insistence that the shortfall be “cured” without raising taxes or spending any of the state’s Rainy Day Fund.