Job Creation Numbers, Clinton Through Obama

I’m sure you’ve seen this graph:

It’s not a coincidence that the Obama people chose to start the graph during the recession, and consequently the worst view of the Bush administration.  It gives the impression that Obama has wrenched the economy back on solid footing.  There are a few problems with the graph that, quite frankly, could be rated as ‘Pants on Fire’ by Politifact.

1.  The data used to make this graph is from non-seasonally adjusted employment numbers.  The accepted standard for reporting employment numbers comes from the seasonally adjusted numbers, but if that were the case, the administration would have to admit that job creation has only been positive for 16 months, not the 23 months they are touting.  You may remember the overwhelming failure of Recovery Summer II, which gave us negative job growth way back in July through September of 2010.  During this time a total of 303,000 jobs were lost.  An inconvenient fact to the narrative the Obama team wants to put out, hence the use of the data that isn’t normally used.

2.  In order to get positive spin out of this graph, the Obama team is telling a story that doesn’t quite fit the actual numbers.  They have constantly discounted the job losses at the beginning of his term, attributing the negative numbers to Bush.  One of the first signs that the numbers don’t tell the story you are looking for is when the measurement system is quibbled with, rather than using the actual data.  It’s a bit like arguing about the polling methodology when the poll that is released bears bad news.  Historically, presidents have been judged on their full term, not when they choose.

The graph below is a statistically correct representation of the job creation under Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

Observations:

1.  The average job creation under Clinton was 240K per month, Bush averaged 20K per month, and Obama has averaged -53K.  From left to right you will notice a ‘step down’ pattern.  Since the 90′s, job creation hasn’t been very stable, and is trending in the wrong direction.

2.  Notice the pattern that exists.  Generally speaking, a few good months of job creation have been followed by a few months of job losses.  If this holds, and there’s no reason to think that it won’t, there will be job losses this summer, or job creation that doesn’t quite keep up with population growth.  There is currently a trend of three straight months of job creation, which generally predicts a short decline.

3. The recovery from the deep job losses in 2008-2009 hasn’t produced a bounce.  The only month of job creation above 500K is due to census hiring, and most of those jobs were lost in the following months.

4.  Since the stimulus passed, there has been a total of -428,000 jobs created.  Even if you allow six months for money to be spent, and use the governments impact of 18 months, a total of 989,000 jobs were created.  This is a far cry from the 3M that the administration claims, but they also include use ‘created or saved’ which isn’t measurable.  It’s just a term to deflect from the actual impact to jobs from spending close to a trillion dollars.  It would also assume that every job created was somehow related to the stimulus.  Not very likely.