Obama wrong about pay and jobs in right to work states

IBD:
The president says right-to-work laws mean "the right to work for less money." So how does he explain the fact that incomes are up in RTW states while forced unionism is a proven job killer?

Campaigning Monday in Michigan as it stood poised to become the nation's 24th right-to-work state, President Obama spoke the exact opposite of the truth to union workers at a Daimler Detroit Diesel plant in the birthplace of organized labor.

"What we shouldn't be doing," he told the small crowd, "is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages. We don't want a race to the bottom. We want a race to the top."

Yet looking at the hard numbers, becoming a right-to-work state is a direct line to the top.

According to Michigan's Mackinac Center, using data taken from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics, private-sector, inflation-adjusted employee compensation in right-to-work states increased by 12% between 2001 and 2011 compared with just 3% over the same period in forced-unionization states.

These good wages came from good jobs. Employment in right-to-work states expanded 2.4% over the same stretch vs. a 3.4% decline in non-right-to-work states. Ironically, Obama is taking credit for jobs created in RTW states.

According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, right-to-work states (excluding Indiana, which passed a RTW law in early 2012) "were responsible for 72% of all net household job growth across the U.S. from June 2009 through September 2012."

This is why people vote with their feet and move to these states. RTW states experienced large population gains of 15.3% from 2000 to 2010, compared to 5.9% in non-RTW states.
...
Obama has a tendency to make stuff up to support his arguments and this is a case in point.  It is not even close.  Right to work states have more growth in income and jobs.  Why didn't the legions of fact checkers in the media jump on this misleading claim by Obama.  Do they have a conflict of interest because they belong to a union?

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