At The Atlantic, there is a story discussing private- and public-sector job-creation under Obama relative to the other presidents since Reagan. The Atlantic's coverage of this topic illustrates once again the need to normalize data when making comparisons.
Over at this other publication, the equivalent of the figure on the left shown below is provided -- which illustrates absolute cumulative private sector job creation since taking office for Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama.
Looking at the data this way suggests that Obama's administration has seen net private-sector job-creation on the order of 3.25 million jobs. It also suggests that Obama's job-creation record is in the ballpark (i.e., about half) of Reagan's at the same point in their respective terms.
But this fails to account for population growth. When we normalize the data to population, we get the plot above on the right. Obama is still well into the job-creation hole, and not even close to where the Reagan recovery was at this point in time. When Reagan took office, there were 326,000 private-sector jobs per million population. At this point in his term, that had already increased to 340,000, heading up to 363,000 by the time he left office.
Via: American Thinker
Continue Reading....
