Which presidents were best for private-sector jobs?

[Matt Dillon]

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

[Matt Dillon]

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

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

Parents love Disney, you know the company that the alt right has declared war on. Parents generally think highly of their teachers, you know the people the alt right have declared war on. I could go on, but you get the point.

That job creation might be in spite of government policies rather than because of those policies.

Presidents often get the credit or blame for economic developments for which they are not responsible.

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

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

[Flash]

I'd say the relevant comparison isn't one average unemployment rate versus another. If you inherit a great situation and make it terrible, and someone else inherits a terrible situation and makes it great at the same rate, you may end up with identical averages, but that hardly suggests you're equal. Someone who steadily takes an unemployment rate from 4 to 10 and someone who takes it from 10 to 4 aren't equally accomplished even if they both averaged 7.

This sounds like the "yeah, but" argument.....

[Lightbringer]

There is no such thing as putting a job in hibernation as we are learning over and over again.

Really dumbass, we just saw it happen.

[Matt Dillon]

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

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

Parents love Disney, you know the company that the alt right has declared war on. Parents generally think highly of their teachers, you know the people the alt right have declared war on. I could go on, but you get the point.

That job creation might be in spite of government policies rather than because of those policies.

Presidents often get the credit or blame for economic developments for which they are not responsible.

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

Link-?

[Walt]

Really dumbass, we just saw it happen.

11 million jobs unfilled, supply chains in chaos, huge numbers of market failures all at once... I could go on and on, but what we did not just see is an extremely easy job hibernation, return of jobs.

[Mina]

This sounds like the "yeah, but" argument.....

I don't think so. I see the distinction this way:

You're trying to find the best diet to help you lose weight. On Diet A --the "eat a lot of chocolate" diet-- your weight goes up, whereas on Diet B --which is mostly veggies-- it comes down. However, you really liked Diet A, so you tell yourself "yeah, diet B was better in terms of weight loss, but I was really stressed when I was on Diet A, so the weight I gained then doesn't count."

That's a "yeah, but" argument.

Now, consider that Diet A took your weight from 300 pounds to 350, whereas Diet B dropped it from 350 to 310. If you really love chocolate and want to go back to Diet A, you could try to tell yourself Diet A is better by pointing out that your average weight was lower on that diet. But it wouldn't be a "yeah, but" argument to point out that's a silly metric to use when measuring the effectiveness of a diet. It's just identifying the proper point of comparison.

[Mina]

Really dumbass, we just saw it happen.

There were definitely "furloughs" in March and April 2020 -- people like restaurant workers who were basically told to stand by until their businesses were permitted to open again after several weeks. I guess that could be treated as a kind of "hibernation." That's what allowed the extremely rapid hiring of May and June 2020 (and, to a lesser extent, July-September of that year): these weren't fresh hires, where there was the usual slow process of posting a job, collecting applications, doing a couple rounds of interviews, making an offer, giving two weeks notice to an old employer, going through the HR process, and finally on-boarding them. Instead, it was basically just a matter of giving them a call and telling them what shifts they'd be working.

However, while people were furloughed for a few weeks or at most a few months, that's not the hiring we saw later, in the October 2020-and-onwards period. Generally speaking, few of those were people just returning to jobs they'd had before. They were either new people in old positions, or new people in new positions. For example, at the end of 2019, Amazon had 798,000 employees. Today, it's over 1.6 million. That's not a matter of them furloughing workers and calling them back. It's a matter of adding hundreds of thousands of jobs that never existed before.

What was troubling about late 2020 is that once the "ending furloughs" part of the rehiring effort ended, the job market totally lost momentum. November 2020 had barely over 300,000 jobs added, and in December jobs were actually lost. Fortunately, that late-Trump-era weakness ended up being short-lived, and once Biden took office we got hundreds of thousands of jobs added every single month after that (nearly always over 400,000, in fact).

[Mina]

Link-?

Not sure who you're asking for a link, but if it's the private sector job creation data you need, it's here:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV

You can also find identical data at the BLS site, but I think you need to use their tool to retrieve it, whereas the FED site allows for a simple link.

[Matt Dillon]

Not sure who you're asking for a link, but if it's the private sector job creation data you need, it's here:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV

You can also find identical data at the BLS site, but I think you need to use their tool to retrieve it, whereas the FED site allows for a simple link.

That links to a chart showing the thing I'm talking about.

See the peak? Then the big dip due to shutdowns? Then how it isn't back up to the peak yet?

Aside from that; Where'd you get your info for the OP? Daily leftist shill e-mail blast in your inbox that AM with the talking points for the day?

'Sup?

[Mina]

That links to a chart showing the thing I'm talking about.

See the peak? Then the big dip due to shutdowns? Then how it isn't back up to the peak yet?

Yes, I see that dramatic fall during the Trump era, when his woeful mismanagement of the COVID crisis cratered the job market to a degree never before seen. And I see that we're already almost out of that hole, under Biden. We're currently just 500,000 shy from the all-time high for jobs, and with us adding between 406,000 and 704,000 jobs per month so far this year, we could theoretically get there this month.

Aside from that; Where'd you get your info for the OP?

The link I provided you. Click on download and you can get all the data in spreadsheet format and easily do the math yourself to confirm my numbers.

For example, Trump's last month in office was January 2021, with 121,229 thousand private jobs. Four years earlier, there were 123,312 thousand private jobs. That's a decrease of about 1.689%. That was over the course of four years, which annualized to about -0.425% (in other words, if something were to decline 0.425% each year, for four straight years, it would be down about 1.689% total).

You can do that math for each and find that the numbers are what I provided in that top post.

[Matt Dillon]

Yes, I see that dramatic fall during the Trump era, when his woeful mismanagement of the COVID crisis cratered the job market to a degree never before seen. And I see that we're already almost out of that hole, under Biden. We're currently just 500,000 shy from the all-time high for jobs, and with us adding between 406,000 and 704,000 jobs per month so far this year, we could theoretically get there this month.



The link I provided you. Click on download and you can get all the data in spreadsheet format and easily do the math yourself to confirm my numbers.

For example, Trump's last month in office was January 2021, with 121,229 thousand private jobs. Four years earlier, there were 123,312 thousand private jobs. That's a decrease of about 1.689%. That was over the course of four years, which annualized to about -0.425% (in other words, if something were to decline 0.425% each year, for four straight years, it would be down about 1.689% total).

You can do that math for each and find that the numbers are what I provided in that top post.

Yeah, but that's not how you got all that info compiled. You didn't do all that. There's more to it than that. (aside from the percentage figuring, which, if you did all that..why?)

If that's how you did it, why are they not in chronological order? Why are they not from greatest to least or vice versa?

Why would it not read chronologically?

[Lightbringer]

11 million jobs unfilled, supply chains in chaos, huge numbers of market failures all at once... I could go on and on, but what we did not just see is an extremely easy job hibernation, return of jobs.

Hibernation is exactly what we saw.

[Lightbringer]

There were definitely "furloughs" in March and April 2020 -- people like restaurant workers who were basically told to stand by until their businesses were permitted to open again after several weeks. I guess that could be treated as a kind of "hibernation." That's what allowed the extremely rapid hiring of May and June 2020 (and, to a lesser extent, July-September of that year): these weren't fresh hires, where there was the usual slow process of posting a job, collecting applications, doing a couple rounds of interviews, making an offer, giving two weeks notice to an old employer, going through the HR process, and finally on-boarding them. Instead, it was basically just a matter of giving them a call and telling them what shifts they'd be working.

However, while people were furloughed for a few weeks or at most a few months, that's not the hiring we saw later, in the October 2020-and-onwards period. Generally speaking, few of those were people just returning to jobs they'd had before. They were either new people in old positions, or new people in new positions. For example, at the end of 2019, Amazon had 798,000 employees. Today, it's over 1.6 million. That's not a matter of them furloughing workers and calling them back. It's a matter of adding hundreds of thousands of jobs that never existed before.

What was troubling about late 2020 is that once the "ending furloughs" part of the rehiring effort ended, the job market totally lost momentum. November 2020 had barely over 300,000 jobs added, and in December jobs were actually lost. Fortunately, that late-Trump-era weakness ended up being short-lived, and once Biden took office we got hundreds of thousands of jobs added every single month after that (nearly always over 400,000, in fact).

You should have stopped there. You would have sounded a lot smarter.

[Mina]

You should have stopped there. You would have sounded a lot smarter.

The rest of it sounds plenty smart to those smart enough to understand it. Keep working on your reading skills, though, and you'll get there. Good luck!