"52 months of uninterrupted job growth"

[hfojvt]

Bush's statement about how the economy was good for a large part of his two terms. Clinton never had 52 months uninterrupted even as he presided over the longest peace-time expansion of the US economy.

Here's the Bush record by categories.

Of the 52 months
3 were under 25,000
3 were under 50,000 (and over 25,000)
5 were under 75,000
4 were under 100,000
13 were under 150,000
9 were under 200,000
10 were under 300,000
5 were under 400,000

A total of 28 of those 52 months saw less than 150,000 jobs created. It takes about 150,000 jobs for our economy to break even, because of our increasing population.

Further comparison to the Clinton record.

In those 52 months about 8,240,000 jobs were created. That's an average of 158,462 per month.

Compare that to the monthly average during the Clinton years

1993 - 232,000
1994 - 321,000
1995 - 180,000
1996 - 233,000
1997 - 280,000
1998 - 250,000
1999 - 262,000
2000 - 161,000
8 year average - 240,000

6 of those 8 years were significantly better than the JR Bush average. And, of course the Bush administration opened with 1,762,000 jobs lost in 2001, 540,000 jobs lost in 2002, a mere 87,000 jobs gained in 2003 and estimated 2,589,000 jobs lost in 2008. And, of course, it wasn't a peacetime economy.

The short version is that Bush's mention of the 52 months is lipstick on a pig.

[begin_within]

1. Uninterrupted by paychecks, he forgot to say

[peekaloo]

2. !

nice

:D

[Skittles]

4. YOU KNOW IT, BOB WEAVER

:thumbsup:

[Mojambo]

3. Screw the number of jobs. Tell me about wages. n/t

[.... callchet ....]

5. Nicest riding

plane I ever had until it crashed.

[rurallib]

6. Heard there was a total - TOTAL - of 2% job growth over 8 years

heard that number somewhere on NPR today.
2%. That is .25% per year on average That is god awful. I think even Hoover did better.

[PM Martin]

7. kick

[TheKentuckian]

8. Wal-Mart was doing some serious hiring there

shrub created lots of $6 and $7 an hour jobs but even that has come grinding to a halt.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

9. I have always heard that 250,000 a month to stay even.

You're being generous using the 150K figure. To me, they never hit a mark. And they cooked the books to intentionally not count the long term unemployed who dropped off the rolls or the overemployed (working 3 jobs) or the underemployed (working part-time but want full-time) and they also completely ignore WAGE as someone has already pointed out.

[hfojvt]

13. I cannot find any of the Krugman columns where he mentioned that number

I think it's better to lowball that estimate to satisfy critics. If the number is 250,000 then the Clinton years were barely break-even. Perhaps tomorrow I will see what the BLS said about wages in the last 8 years.

[Greyhound]

14. I also remember that was the publicized number until about 2004 when it was just changed

with no explanation. Looking at the numbers it becomes obvious.
:kick:

[Canuckistanian]

10. Yeah, thanks for all the Walmart "jobs"

And all those burger-flipping gigs.

Sorry about those well-paying manufacturing jobs, though. Oh and all the auto workers who can't count on keeping a paycheck into 2009.

Thanks again, George.

[DavidDvorkin]

11. He also said he inherited a recession

They'll just keep repeating that until it becomes part of the standard history.

[Hubert Flottz]

12. In India and China?