The nation has lost jobs in 25 of the 31 months that President Bush has been in office, making for the worst jobs record at this point in a presidency of any administration since Herbert Hoover. Including last month’s loss of 44,000 positions (when economists had predicted a 10,000-job increase), our economy has shed more than 2.5 million jobs and 3.2 million private-sector jobs since the president took office.
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/ecouncil/ec08052003f.cfm
The politics of job losses
Posted: Friday, June 05, 2009 1:15 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: White House, Economy
From NBC's Mark Murray
Looking ahead to 2010 and 2012, one thing is absolutely clear: Each monthly jobs report will become a politically charged event. Democrats will tout any good news, while Republicans will seize on any news that's bad.
Take today's report, which shows that the economy shed some 345,000 jobs in May and that the unemployment rate is now at 9.4%. The Republican National Committee quickly pounced on those numbers, noting that the U.S. economy has lost more than 2.1 million jobs since President Obama took office. “Today’s unemployment numbers confirm that the Democrat economic stimulus bill is not creating the jobs President Obama promised," RNC Chairman Michael Steele said in a statement.
To put those 2.1 million lost jobs into perspective, however, the U.S. economy lost nearly 3.1 million jobs during Bush's final year as president (Jan. 2008 to Dec. 2008). That means two things: 1) monthly job losses have been growing at a faster clip than in 2008, and 2) the economy was shedding jobs well before Obama took office in January.
One other thing that seems apparent from the jobs data: It appears -- for now -- that the economy bottomed out in January 2009, when the economy lost 741,000 jobs.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/06/05/1955110.aspx
Years Total avg Average annualized
Monthly job growth Monthly growth
(thousands)
February 1945 – November 1948 73 2.0%
November 1948–July 1953 95 2.4%
July 1953–August 1957 53 1.2%
August 1957–April 1960 53 1.2%
April 1960–December 1969 142 2.7%
December 1969–November 1973 142 2.3%
November 1973–January 1980 174 2.5%
January 1980-July 1981 44 0.6%
July 1981–July 1990 168 2.0%
July 1990–March 2001 178 1.8%
March 2001–December 2007 68 0.6%
Source: National Bureau of Economic Research and Bureau of Labor Statistics
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/pdf/picker_jobs.pdf
