Erika already noted the reassurance from President Obama on the state of the private sector, which he thinks is “doing fine”:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qevbhsmKFOQ[/youtube]
Well, just how “fine” has the private sector done? Let’s take a look at the record, and compare it to Obama’s words. First, the private sector during his term of office has created a net 55,000 since Obama took office. The BLS data from the CES survey from 2009-12 produces this chart:
Note the curve in the graph. Obama signed the stimulus bill in February 2009, which was supposed to halt job erosion. The private sector lost jobs for the next twelve months in a row, only flipping to the positive in March 2010. A better starting position would be the point of recovery, which came four months after the stimulus bill got signed, in June 2009. Even if one goes from the start of the recovery, though, that only comes to 3.107 million jobs in the private sector, not 4.3 million.In order to get to 4.3 million, Obama has to ignore his first full year in office. Only by comparing May 2012 to February 2010 do we get to 4.267 million private-sector jobs being created. However, that’s not a net gain, certainly not counting from the launch of the $800 billion jobs stimulus plan, nor from the recovery.
Even if we assign the entirety of the recession to George Bush, as Obama argues, job growth in the private sector in this recovery amounts to only 86,300 jobs per month — not even enough to keep up with population growth, which requires roughly 125,000-150,000 new jobs per month to just tread water. Obama’s spurious claim of 4.267 million jobs in 27 months as being net for his economic policies still amounts to just 158,000 per month, barely the status quo … at the bottom of the trough.
