the worst record on jobs for any president since Herbert Hoover led at the beginning of the Great Depression
Baseless claim and you know it. The facts are that:
* the numbers of unemployed in this cycle haven't even reached the numbers in the '91 recession, much less the early '80s or the Great Depression, and
* the unemployment rate is right at its average since 1960 and .4% below its average of the last 30 years; it peaked this summer at 6.4%, the 30-year average, well below its 1992 high and not even remotely close to the levels of 1975 and 1982-83.
And if you're basing your claim on the "2.6 million" job loss number, you're still wrong - even ignoring the fact that you're misleadingly using an absolute number while the labor force has grown by 35 million (31%) over the last 20 years and has quadrupled since the Great Depression.
The fact is, based on non-farm payrolls (which many economists suspect has overstated job losses in this cycle due to the exclusion of small businesses and self-employed), the economy lost more jobs (in absolute numbers) in 1981-1982 than in this cycle. It also lost 2.2 million or more jobs on three other occasions since the Great Depression, in 1975, 1958 and 1949 - again, from a much smaller labor force. And that's not even counting the end of WWII, when the economy lost 4.3 million jobs.
Setting the record straight (and using a meaningful measure as opposed to your misleading one), job losses as a percentage of each cycle peak in non-farm payrolls (i.e. peak to trough percentage of jobs lost) since the end of the Great Depression are as follows:
Peak Trough % Lost
1943 1945 10.1%
1948 1949 5.2%
1953 1954 3.4%
1957 1958 4.4%
1960 1961 2.3%
1974 1975 2.8%
1981 1982 3.1%
1990 1991 1.5%
2001 2003 2.0%
Seven other downturns since the depression worse than this one in terms of job losses.
Source of all data: bls.gov
Any way you cut it, consider your lie exposed. |
