Saw this chart over the weekend and it didn’t sit right…why? Population. Without adjusting for population growth, these number have no context and are meaningless. Now, the author did note that there were difference between the periods but did not put any #’s to it. So, let do some legwork:
I’ll keep it simple. For a two term President I took the US population at the start of year 5 (end of year 4) of their Presidency as the “population” and for single term, I took the start of year 3. Population numbers are from Google for the years (’78, ’84, ’90, ’96, ’04, ’08) assuming google marks the number for each year as of 12/31 of that year. Even if they do it Jan 1, we are still measuring the same for each President so while the specific number would change a “bit”, the overall outcome would not.
IF we do it that way, here are the numbers of “jobs added as a percent of the population”
Note: I used 10,391MM jobs for Obama in keeping with the numbers presented originally….it is the pace Obama is currently on. “IF” the US slides into recession in 2016 and jobs fall, Obama’s number would have to be revised lower. I do not think this happens but it is always a possibility.
When we do it this way….which I feel is far more accurate, we find out private sector job creation (from best to worst)
1- Clinton
2- Reagan
3- Carter
4- Obama
5- Bush Sr
6- W
It is fair because all the above Presidents either “inherited” or saw a recession of varying degrees during their presidency (the US was entering one when Carter left office). From Wikipedia:
One can argue who had it “worse” but the other side can argue perhaps other recessions were more mild due to proactive policies from the administration at that time. Obama fans will say he “inherited” the worst economy and Reagan fans will argue he inherited Carter’s 13% inflation, recession and had Volker not intentionally caused a second 1981-82 recession with > 12% interest rates to crush inflation, his term 1 numbers would be far better. Conversely both may argue Clinton benefitted from Greenspan’s policies that Bush fans will argue eventually came home to roost in his term (tech stock bubble) and that 9/11 basically shut the US down for days and its effects lasted longer. Everyone would then probably argue that the others’ policies made their situation even worse than it should have been.
The point is they all had issues to deal with. One can get really into the weeds in this but the point I was trying to make was looking at an aggregate number without context can be meaningless.