Lawrence Journal-World opinion section

Last week, while signing into law new limits on public assistance programs, Gov. Sam Brownback reiterated his contention that reducing benefits would help people get “out of poverty” and “back into the labor force.”

Just a few days later, however, a new report from the Kansas Department of Labor showed why that might be easier said than done.

In just one month, from March to April, Kansas lost 3,700 nonfarm jobs and 3,000 private-sector jobs, with the largest decreases occurring in the leisure and hospitality sector. Compared with April of 2015, the state had 800 more private-sector jobs but, overall, had 600 fewer seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs.

The Department of Labor news release on the report focused on the fact that the state’s unemployment rate had edged down from 3.9 percent in March to 3.8 percent in April. That sounds like a small step in the right direction, but the fact that unemployment is dropping while the number of jobs also is down seems to indicate that a number of Kansans have simply given up on finding a job or have taken the job search to another state.

The Brownback administration has consistently emphasized private-sector jobs numbers as opposed to overall numbers, which include government jobs. The rationale is that losing government jobs is a result of smaller government and is acceptable as long as private-sector jobs are increasing.

In many cases, however, state spending cuts prompted by revenues that are coming in well below estimates also have an impact on private-sector jobs. Just one example is the 25 highway modernization and expansion projects that have been put on hold as a result of funding sweeps from the Kansas Department of Transportation. Because of the loss of those funds, KDOT has been forced to delay $271 million worth of work on 14 projects for the fiscal year that begins on July 1 and another $247 million for nine projects scheduled for the following year. Those projects would have funded a lot of private-sector jobs in the state’s construction industry.

Employment data showing that Kansas had job growth of less than 1 percent from March 2015 to March 2016 was one factor noted by Moody’s Investors Service last week when it put the state’s economic outlook in the “negative” category. It’s just another piece of evidence that state policies that included large income tax cuts simply aren’t having the favorable impact that Brownback promised to the people of Kansas.