Reply #15

I think we're still at negative job growth under Obama, but it's close to breaking even for 2/09 to the present. My #s might be a couple of months stale.

Job growth hasn't been horrible--not good, but not horrible--under Obama, if you discount the first few months. You have to watch what is happening at the beginning and cut-off dates to make sense of the #s. Otherwise they're just numbers and not so meaningful.

If you abstract away recessions, you get #s that aren't too different. In 2001 nobody could "inherit a recession"--you had to man up for any economic conditions the week you were inaugurated; 12 years later, you're no responsible for things 3 years after inauguration. So first thing, remove the politics. Politics is rhetoric, and rhetoric is a different field from logic. Logic helps understanding; rhetoric is to convince people, whatever it takes.

The cry in the '00s was always that #s like 100k or 150k jobs/moth created was less than needed, the recovery was weak, etc. Those #s aren't much different from now. The spin is different. Spin is rhetoric. We seem to be having a recession every 9-10 years. The trendline for job creation during recovery is heading downward. What logical use you make of those is still up for grabs.

(on edit: The nifty chart that came up to near the present had a bad link character. Under Obama, there was an early spike and then the line looks very much like 2004.)