Which presidents were best for private-sector jobs?

[Cypress]

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.

Long term trends mean something.

It cannot be a fluke or a statistical anomaly that for 80 years the economy has typically and consistently done better under Democratic presidents.

"I've been around a long time. And it just seems the economy does better under the Democrats than under Republicans." ---> Donald Trumpf

https://www.google.com/amp/s/theweek...emocrats%3famp

[SmarterthanYou]

this post is a very good example of how both sides can use selective stats and criteria to base a premise that pleases them.............when reality dictates that no president is good, or best, for private sector jobs

[Mina]

So the last three Republican presidents collectively actually lost jobs for the 16 years they had in office.

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

[Cypress]

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

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

[Mina]

Reagan and Clinton. Biden being on that list is a fucking joke. He's not creating jobs, those jobs already existed they were just put into hibernation.

I'm not sure about that. Remember, by the end of 2020, the post-lockdown job recovery had already run its course, and the economy was losing jobs again. The jobs we added in 2021 and 2022 weren't people who'd been furloughed during lockdowns and were just being called back. They included lots of brand new positions long after the lockdowns were over.

Anyway, if we're going to be putting asterisks by those numbers, a good place to start would be to control for deficits. It's one thing for an economy to create a lot of jobs when it's being supercharged by rising deficit levels. It's more impressive to do it when the economy is effectively dealing with withdrawal, by way of falling deficits. That's what makes the Clinton, Obama, and Biden job creation so impressive, since that was even as we were weaning the economy slowly off of massive deficit spending left by their respective predecessors. By comparison, Reagan's job creation was accomplished with the aid of massive increases in fiscal stimulus (and massive increases of monetary stimulus, too, for that matter).

[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.