The Obama Economy, pt. 2: Job Creation

Continuing the theme of "were you better off four years ago?", three points tend to come up in the GOP's economic attack on Obama: job creation, debt and gas prices. Much of their argument is inaccurate and comes from a overwhelming desire to discredit this presidency. It's a strong reminder that we should always be aware of motivated reasoning, especially when it comes to political speech. This blog is no exception.

It might help to put some of their claims into context. Consider the following.

Total job creation under Obama has been pretty weak, there's really no debating that. But most people miss the fact that this weakness comes from significant declines in public (i.e. government) employment. Obama has overseen the largest decline in public employment in modern history. Personally, I think this is a terrible thing. But then again, I'm not the kind of person that blames government for all of America's problems.

Private employment growth has been stronger during Obama's first term than during either of the four-year terms of George W. Bush. Although, to be fair, those were some of the worst years for private job growth in modern history. So Obama's first term comes in fourth-to-last place. Better than both Bush years and better than Eisenhower's second term.

So if you are going to call job creation under Obama a catastrophe, you'd have to say the same thing about the Bush years too. And considering that Romney's economic policy and team are incredibly similar to that of George W. Bush, there's almost no reason to believe that it'd be better than what Obama has accomplished.

There's also a more meta argument here. If you were going to pick a generic Democrat or Republican to lead the economy, who would be more likely to create more jobs? The data for the post-war period side overwhelmingly with Democrats. Including Obama's weak tenure, Democrats have created 42m jobs since Kennedy entered office, while Republicans have created 29m, despite the fact that Republicans held the office for 28 years to Democtrats' 23. Even on a broader scale, going back to Truman as Politfact does, Democrats substantially outperform Republicans.

Image courtesy of Bloomberg Government. The original is available here.

Now, if you're relatively wealthy, like most of the Republican base, this record doesn't matter much to you. Job creation is a an issue that particularly affects lower income people, and you're probably more concerned with things like inflation, interest rates and capital growth. This is fine, but these aren't really places to criticize Obama. And neither is job creation.