Crowing George

Via a typo I ended up on the official Whitehouse site and my eye was caught by the phrase Strong U.S. Economy hmm okay well the pound stands at about two dollars at the moment if that type of relationship holds for other countries then in theory it should be cheaper for the USA to create its own products rather then import, thus increasing jobs, and create more export opportunities leading to yet more jobs.

Job Creation Continues - More Than 8.2 Million Jobs Created Since August 2003

And now my hackles are raised. President Bush has been in office since January 2001, his second term started January 2004; so why measure from August 2003?

On July 6, 2007, The Bureau Of Labor Statistics Released New Jobs Figures – 132,000 Jobs Created In June. Since August 2003, more than 8.2 million jobs have been created, with more than 2 million jobs created over the twelve months ending in June. Our economy has now added jobs for 46 straight months, and the unemployment rate remains low at 4.5 percent.

Ah the Bureau of Labor Statistics I love these guys nice, easy to find information. So let's delve.

Well the August 2003 reference is easy - that month was a loss of 42,000 jobs and who wants to include that. Well you would if the previous months more then made up for it... they don't. In fact if you went back any further you'd always end up with a loss; the first positive figure since 2001 is in June 2003 followed by another in July totalling 33,000 add August and you've got a loss. So hey start just after August; well no let's start in January 2001 instead. From then until June (included the preliminary data) Bush has created 5.554 million jobs; not to be sneezed at so why the lack of cheerleading? Clinton in his two terms created 23.066 million jobs, to put that into context that great Republican god Reagan created 15.935 million. Compared to those two Bush is um minuscule.

Oh but I hear the cries of 9/11, and yes indeed it is true that following those tragic events US companies held their flag high and sacked large numbers of staff to prove their patriotism. Down 255,000 in September, 330,000 in October, and 308,000 in November except the third greatest loss for that year was 295,000 in April. In fact for that entire year there was only one gain of 80,000 in February.The year was down by 1.763 million jobs, 700,000 of which occurred prior to September. Oops.

So what about that unemployment rate, indeed it does stand at 4.5% though in 1999 at the same time it stood at 4.3%; in fact in December 2000 it stood at 3.9%. What's going on? In Clinton's first term he inherited an unemployment rate of 7.4% by the end of his first term it was down to 5.4% at the end of his second 3.4%. So Bush started at 3.4% rose to 5.4% and is only now coming back down to 4.5% (9/11 whiners see above).

Going through these you start to notice a trend starting in January 1949 through to June 2007 there has been 93.46 million jobs created, 54.192 million under Democrat Presidents (who only account for 6 out of the 15½ terms)

With the unemployment rate I ran a simple trend line, taking into account the 48 months of one term into account what should the unemployment rate be at the end of the next term. From 1949 onwards if there was a Democrat in office the actual figure would be lower then the projected figure, for a Republican greater except once in the second term for Reagan when he managed to bow out at 5.3% over a projection (from his own previous term) of 8.6%. However it's a little mitigated by the fact that during his terms unemployment rose to its highest rate of 10.8% (for those curious the lowest since 1949 is 2.5% which occurred during the first year of the first term of Dwight Eisenhower (R) so there you go)

Again except for Reagan every Republican President since 1949 has ended their term with an unemployment rate higher then when the started. Conversely every Democrat in that period has ended with it lower.

Make of all that what you will.