Which presidents were best for private-sector jobs?

[Mina]

Moral of the story: In 16 years of the last three Republican presidents, the nation collectively actually lost jobs, and there was no net job growth.

While in the 17 years of the last three Democratic presidents, the nation collectively picked up around 30 million jobs

Yep. And here's something that makes that even more amazing:

The federal budget deficit actually FELL during those three Democratic administrations, and exploded during the three Republican ones, so the drastic Republican under-performance is despite incredible growth of fiscal stimulus.

Heck, for that matter, the Federal Reserve hit each of those three Democratic administrations with a net increase in interest rates, while it handed each of those three Republican administrations with a net decrease in interest rates.

 

[Mina]

Carter's at #4! Hahahaha! Nice research, thanks.

People are always shocked by what an amazing job-creation machine the Carter economy was. That's because it was the peak of women moving into the workforce, such that massive job creation wasn't enough to bring unemployment rates down. And, from the perspective of men, it was an era when suddenly they had a lot more competition for jobs, so it FELT like a weak time for job creation, even though it was actually extremely strong.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

People are always shocked by what an amazing job-creation machine the Carter economy was. That's because it was the peak of women moving into the workforce, such that massive job creation wasn't enough to bring unemployment rates down. And, from the perspective of men, it was an era when suddenly they had a lot more competition for jobs, so it FELT like a weak time for job creation, even though it was actually extremely strong.

Yea, that's why he was a one-term president with terrible polling and people who lived through his presidency thought the economy was doing terribly...

What did all that job creation get Carter or the nation?

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Or LBJ. He instituted many social programs, and since his time in office almost all have been failures.

 

[Mina]

Yea, that's why he was a one-term president with terrible polling and people who lived through his presidency thought the economy was doing terribly...

What did all that job creation get Carter or the nation?

It got us through a Fed-triggered recession without a whole lot of poverty increase, unemployment rise, or median income decline, while allowing us to keep deficits low throughout. Things could have been a lot worse. But that Fed-initiated hit was bad enough that even though it eventually set us up for decades without any serious inflation worries, as of November 1980, people weren't happy.

Even then, it had been a very close election, with Carter leading in the polls very late. He'd been up on Reagan by as much as eight points just weeks before the election, but the Iran hostage crisis really played against Carter in those closing weeks, as did a weak debate performance (Reagan, a professional actor, did great in those settings). That wasn't enough for Reagan to get overwhelming support (he only got 50.75% of the vote), but it was enough to show Carter the door.

 

[Mina]

Or LBJ. He instituted many social programs....

Yes, and they've been spectacularly successful. People tend to forget just how bad things were before him. For example, in the last year on record before he took the presidency, a staggering 55.1% of all Black people in America lived in poverty. That was down 22.9 points by the year he left office. That's just a mind-blowing achievement. And things continued to get better, though obviously not at anything like the pace of the LBJ-era improvement. These days, we're down another 12.7 points.

 

[Life is Golden]

McNamara fallacy. This ignores many other factors that would influence job creation such as the employment rate, economic growth rates, and other factors in the economy. One should note, that in Biden's (so far), FDR's first term, LBJ's term, and Carter's term, inflation was high and rising and the economy tanked.


Thus the cherry picked information in the OP is meaningless drivel.

As they say, there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.

 

[Flash]

Well, in the same way, when you have Democratic eras outperforming Republican ones so often, over so long, across so many social and economic measures, it stops looking like random data. When they offer you a choice of a Republican or a Democratic president, you'd be wide to pick Democrat, because the evidence suggests you'll get better performance.

You were only using private sector job creation as your measure. It differs by different measures and during a president's term. For example, Biden's job creation is going to be high because it had dropped so low under Trump (minus 20 million jobs) it was just recovering to its previous level.

Also, I have seen some studies that show a divided government tends to result in the best economic performance.

 

[Flash]

Quite true, but you still have to admit that over a span of 80 years, the (D) = more job creation assertion is well established by the data presented. And that's with the popular RW meme that (D)s are "tax and spend."

That is one measure, but higher spending is usually going to result in more job creation but may be accompanied by higher inflation, interest rates, etc (Carter). Currently there are 11 million unfilled jobs but there are also several negative economic measures occurring.

Trying to make it partisan usually doesn't hold up to research. For example, the effects of a certain policy seldom occur immediately and may take 1-2 years before showing any result. Using 1-2 years is a reasonable time for assessment, but it results in different conclusions. If I remember correctly, one year shows better Democratic performance while two years is better Republican performance. It is hard to give a president credit (or blame) for policies unless we can identify policies that caused that result.

 

[Mina]

You were only using private sector job creation as your measure

Yes, but other measures look remarkably similar. The rankings for total job creation are almost the same, for example. You'll also find Democratic presidential eras were better, on average, for real median income growth, or when it comes to various measures of prosperity or social well-being (changes in poverty rates, or incarceration rates, or violent crime rates, or stock values, and so on).

It differs by different measures and during a president's term. For example, Biden's job creation is going to be high because it had dropped so low under Trump (minus 20 million jobs) it was just recovering to its previous level.

Yes, you can always argue that it's not that Democrats are so awesome, but instead that Republicans are so shitty that Democrats are often just inheriting such a train-wreck that mere competence is going to mean dramatic job creation (other examples being the New Deal or the Clinton era). It's hard to prove exactly what's going on, since you can't easily control for that.

Also, I have seen some studies that show a divided government tends to result in the best economic performance.

I have, too, but they cherry-picked shamelessly to try to argue that. The reality is the strongest economic growth in American history was during the New Deal/WWII era, and not that far behind was the Kennedy/Johnson era. Those were both periods when government was united. Studies that argue otherwise tend to have to look only to much more recent data, and then they throw united Democratic government into the same category of united Republican government, which obscures what's really going on.

 

[Celticguy]

jobs tend to be a lagging indicator.
Conservatives get elected to fix the problems donkeys cause.
Look at it month by month to better assess trend.

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

That is one measure, but higher spending is usually going to result in more job creation but may be accompanied by higher inflation, interest rates, etc (Carter). Currently there are 11 million unfilled jobs but there are also several negative economic measures occurring.

Trying to make it partisan usually doesn't hold up to research. For example, the effects of a certain policy seldom occur immediately and may take 1-2 years before showing any result. Using 1-2 years is a reasonable time for assessment, but it results in different conclusions. If I remember correctly, one year shows better Democratic performance while two years is better Republican performance. It is hard to give a president credit (or blame) for policies unless we can identify policies that caused that result.

Yep. And every time a RWer here or elsewhere praised Trump for his "great economic policies," and I would ask which specifically are helpful, not a single one could point to anything specific. A few mentioned some EOs but when looked at closely they actually did nothing to change policy regarding the economy, and (like some of Biden's) were just done to appease the base.

 

[Flash]

Yep. I was accused of "Cherry Picking" by one of the other posters, but if I'd wanted to cherry-pick the results, I'd actually have started the series with GHW Bush's presidency. Then the list would look like this:

Biden 5.20
Clinton 2.63
Obama 1.27
Bush (1) 0.42
Bush (2) -0.04
Trump -0.43

Some of these years were determined by the economic conditions that occurred during the presidential term. The 2008 recession hurt Bush and Obama and would have had the same impact on any president. The pandemic affected Trump's term and the excess money supply and decreased production caused by the pandemic caused the inflation and hurt Biden or anybody else who took office at that time.

 

[tigerred59]

I've seen a few posters here arguing that Republican policies are better for private sector job creation. So, I thought I'd check whether that's true. Here's the annualized rate of private-sector job creation for each recent president, going back as far as the Federal Reserve site goes (1940):

Biden 5.20
FDR 5.04
LBJ 3.56
Carter 3.28
Truman 2.70
Clinton 2.63
Reagan 2.27
Nixon 2.11
JFK 2.04
Obama 1.27
Ford 0.86
Eisenhower 0.50
Bush (1) 0.42
Bush (2) -0.04
Trump -0.43

Best for me, will always be Obama, that economy he left that corrupt orange white fuck, was ruined by the GOP and their failures to address Covid-19

 

[Flash]

Yep. And every time a RWer here or elsewhere praised Trump for his "great economic policies," and I would ask which specifically are helpful, not a single one could point to anything specific. A few mentioned some EOs but when looked at closely they actually did nothing to change policy regarding the economy, and (like some of Biden's) were just done to appease the base.

And, the tariffs were a disaster. We had to pay the farmers $40+ billion because of retaliation.

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

And, the tariffs were a disaster. We had to pay the farmers $40+ billion because of retaliation.

And how many lost contracts to sell their beans because China switched to Brazil for its supplies?

 

[Mina]

Best for me, will always be Obama, that economy he left that corrupt orange white fuck, was ruined by the GOP and their failures to address Covid-19

Obama's situation is interesting. Viewed in some ways, his era was underwhelming. The average rate of GDP growth was poor and job creation was slower than for any other modern Democrat. However, I think that comes with two asterisks:

(1) He inherited an economy in absolute meltdown -- it was shrinking at a rate not seen since the Great Depression, and the financial markets were effectively frozen, leaving no clear path for a quick recovery. He managed to get the US back on a growth path.... and one that outpaced most other leading nations coming out of the Great Recession.

(2) Although there were few areas of really dramatic improvement on his watch, what we lacked in drama we made up for in consistency. For maybe the first time in living memory, there was pretty much no measure of either economic performance or social prosperity that didn't move in the right direction. Usually you have some things moving the right way and some going the wrong way. Like in the 60's, the economy was growing well, but violent crime was surging. In the Clinton era, violent crime was falling, but incarceration rates were rising. With Obama, pretty much everything moved in the right direction: Real incomes, real GDP per capita, stock values, poverty rates, violent crime rates, incarceration rates, federal budget deficits, unemployment rates, home values, consumer debt levels, US approval ratings internationally, the share of Americans covered by health insurance, and so on. You have to look hard to find any area where we didn't improve on his watch..... and, seriously, can you think of any other modern president about whom that could be said?

 

[Mina]

Some of these years were determined by the economic conditions that occurred during the presidential term.

Yes. However, what I find interesting is how often right-wingers have to resort to "special pleading".... basically arguing that the results don't count in each case because of one special situation or another. Like yes, Trump's era saw the worst job losses of any modern president, but that doesn't count because of COVID. The younger Bush's numbers were also terrible, but that doesn't count because 9/11 hurt his first term and a global financial crisis hurt his second. The elder Bush's bad numbers don't count, either, because the Cold War had ended and the military de-escalation and the debt hangover from the 80's created unemployment.

It's not just with job creation figures, either. Like point out to a right-winger that in the Reagan era poverty didn't drop at all, the average unemployment rate was higher than the rate Carter left him, deficits exploded, and the violent crime rate soared. I guarantee you'll hear all sorts of well-rehearsed reasons for why none of that can rightly be blamed on Reagan's leadership.

That's why I say the choice of president is a pretty simple one, which comes down to what you want. If you want good results, vote Democrat. If you want endlessly creative rationalizations for why the results don't count, vote Republican.

 

[PostmodernProphet]

BLS chart for private sector employment 1940 to 2022....
what the covid crisis and shutting down the economy did to the country in perspective........there was nothing else like it, ever.....

https://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_CES0500000001_1940_2022_all_period_M04_net_1mth.gif

 

[Flash]

And how many lost contracts to sell their beans because China switched to Brazil for its supplies?

And many of those manufacturing products in China moved their operations to Vietnam, Thailand, etc. avoiding the tariffs which were placed on China.