The economy was supposed to be an Achilles heel for Barack Obama and the Democrats in the upcoming election. Unemployment is still high at 8.1 percent. The debt ceiling is even higher with deficits and planned deficits that exceed one trillion dollars a year.
But then suddenly, the Bloomberg Government released a study that provides a huge boost, not only for President Obama, but for Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and the Democratic Party as a whole. Job growth in the private sector has been more successful over the past 51 years under Democratic administrations than it was under its Republican counterparts. And not by a little bit. Despite the fact that Republicans have occupied the White House for 28 of the past 51 years, almost twice as many private sector jobs were created when Democrats occupy the Oval Office.
When Mitt Romney criticized this month's disappointing job numbers, I pictured him uttering those words in a presidential debate, standing on the same stage with President Obama, only to be greeted by this cool response from his opponent: "I'm glad you brought that up. Let's look at the numbers..."
As Bob Drummond wrote the other day on the Bloomberg website:
The BGOV Barometer shows that since Democrat John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, non-government payrolls in the U.S. swelled by almost 42 million jobs under Democrats, compared with 24 million for Republican presidents, according to Labor Department figures.
And this:
Through April, Democratic presidents accounted for an average of 150,000 additional private-sector paychecks per month over that period, more than double the 71,000 average for Republicans.
Bill Clinton was the most successful job creator. During his eight years in office:
On a monthly basis, Democrat Bill Clinton averaged 217,000 new private-sector jobs. Democrat Jimmy Carter had an average of 188,000, followed by Republican Ronald Reagan’s 153,000, according to Labor Department data.
Who would have thought that Jimmy Carter's administration would have averaged 35,000 more new private-sector jobs per month than Ronald Reagan's did?
And that after eight years of George W Bush, who lost 6700 jobs per month during his time in office, President Obama would be able to say the following:
“Our businesses have now created more than 4.2 million new jobs over the last 26 months -- more than 1 million jobs in the last six months alone,” Obama said at a May 4 event in Virginia.
Through April, private employers have added an average of about 900 jobs per month since Obama’s inauguration.
Advantage Obama.
Carter= late 70s---> the dawn of the 80s boom of wall street Reagan= 80s--> firms were buying firms and cutting people and then '87 happened.
George H.w. Bush--- hrmm
Clinton was a great but had a little help from the .com boom
Bush had a "War" economy and wall st. worst villians ever.
Obama is still wet behind the ears.
All that I just stated means nothing....The only President that creates jobs is the president with their name on the door. Tired of Politicians taking the credit for private sector.
I don't think the advantage goes to Obama per say though maybe to democrats in general. However back Clinton out of the equation, and suddenly the jobs created are equal. Moreover, note that in 1994 the Republicans controlled congress until 2006. Just throwing it out there. That forced Clinton to move more towards the center.
I think it is silly to think that the President has that much control over the economy. I'm not disputing the raw numbers, yes. Democrats created more jobs that republicans. I think there are about 10 trillion different factors as to why or how this happened. Correlation does not equal causation.
Sorry but when did causation and correlation become the same thing? There is often a lag between the policies of one government and the results of the next. For example it was Margaret Thatcher's deregulation of the economy that created the huge wealth boom during Tony Blair's years in office.
This is an interesting point that I have been thinking about for some time now. The private sector job growth helps Obama not because he can claim he created those jobs, but because it takes the argument out of Romney's pocket. This is what OP alluded to. Since Obama has been in office, the private sector has added jobs nearly continuously, while the public sector has continued to lose jobs. That kills Romney's message. All he can continue to say is that he would have done it better. Weak argument.
Obama's focus has been on stabilizing the core infrastructure that accelerates business. This was largely necessary given that the economy was redlined on a repeated basis over the last two decades and was juiced beyond sustainable limits. My honest hope is that the presidential focus on a going foward basis will focus on BOTH infrastructure and business growth.
Presidents have input on the economy through their fiscal choices (spending/taxation). That's basically their input on the economy (and it's shared with Congress).
Claiming job growth for "your guy" is the stupidest thing ever. The question is where are government monies being spent (and is it useful) and where is taxation (and is that creating the right incentives)?
Who y'all voting for
Obama's success in the economy has taken me by suprise. I honestly though he was gonna spend the US into economic decay.
And yet the Masters of Austerity of Europe are in a swamp and Obama's stimulus and modest spending is yielding results.
However, I'm still concerned with the debt levels Obama's incurred to create this growth. I'm way too busy to go digin for stats but can anyone else elaborate on this? Can't have a debate on job creation in isolation of this might white elephant.
I honestly don't think I've every heard the words "Obama's success in the ecnomy" ever. We are in the weakest recovery on record, if I recall correctly.
YOu really can't compare Europe to the US, so IMO that's a moot point.
delete
I see your point. Let's just say that I was expecting MUCH worse.
Note on the last one, our defecits keep rising however the effects of that spending is diminishing noted by the slowing growth. Also, pull up a chart of the dollar if you really want to see something interesting. At the end of the day, we have a federal reserve printing up money to fuel government spending.
Run massive deficit spending => Create jobs.
The verdict on Obama will only be answered once our debt situation is known.
I'm pretty sure we know what our debt situation is and will be. Pretty simple. Take whatever our budget deficit and project it forward. It isn't a pretty picture no matter how you stack it. Moreover, we are getting diminished returns on our deficit spending. Our growth is slowing, job growth pace is slowing, and more and more people are leaving the work force either to go back to school (Awesome! More student loan debt) or drop onto programs like SS etc. What I see is borrowing money to inject stimulus into the markets (re: liquidity) to keep the shiny veneer from fading. I don't see much else at the moment. Though at least Bernanke gets a 75% approval rating from investors. Maybe we can take solace in that.
People think that the POTUS has far more influence over the economy than is actually the case and thus assign him an inordinate amount of merit or blame. Clinton, Carter, Reagan, et al are not job creators nor are they job destroyers. They simply presided during economic expansions/contractions of which they had a nebulous impact over.
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