Best Graph Ever

[scheming daemons]

Notice how many jobs we were hemorraging when Obama took office.

[dkf]

1. We need higher highs. That's when you know the trends are moving your way.

That earlier fall in mid 2010 is why we needed QE2. In a way the Fed was doing their best to fulfill their first mandate...full employment.

[Drunken Irishman]

3. Is there a graph that shows ALL of Bush's two terms?

[dkf]

4. Is this it?

http://m.research.stlouisfed.org/fred/series.php?sid=NPPTTL&show=chart&range=max&units=chg

[Drunken Irishman]

6. That's a good one, thanks...

The gains are more impressive, if sustained, than anything in Bush's entire two terms. That's crazy.

[dkf]

10. Well Bush was using voodoo economics.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Real unemployment is still well over 15%

Unemployment halved in FDR's first term. He flipped bankers the bird, and worked hard for other 99% of Americans.

[eridani]

5. Yes--it's a excellent illustration of the ongoing disaster of an economy that we are in.

Labor force participation at a record low, food stamp recipients at a record high. Poverty, homelessness and foreclosures--record highs. Sure, it's better to be on the upside of a business cycle than to be on the downside, but the graph illustrates that we are well on track to having NOT OME SINGLE GODDAM JOB added to our economy for 15 years (2000-2015). This is absolutely unprecedented since we started tracking the data.

Add all the areas below the line. Then add all the areas above the line. Subtract the latter from the former and what does it spell? D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R!

I swear! Is every single soul inside the Beltway such a drooling Panglossian simpleton? The big number one problem for the rest of us out here is JOBS, and we will never, ever get below 8% unemoployment again unless our policymakers make it their number one problem too. The deficit is certainly not THE problem, although in the long term it is A problem.

[Tx4obama]

8. If you can't see that the graph is showing that things are improving under Obama ....

then I don't know what to say!

Everything before January 20, 2009 was Bush's doing and several months under Obama was still the result of Bush.
But Obama has turned things around - the proof is all those jobs ABOVE the line!

[eridani]

9. Exactly what is it about the question "Improving to WHAT?" that you don't understand?

We had two recessions and two recoveries in the 00s, without so much as one single net job gain. This recovery is shaping up to be even worse, as it is a recovery from a financial bubblr.

[girl gone mad]

11. You must have extremely low expectations..

if you can look at that graph and think that it represents any real accomplishment.

[eridani]

12. It would be nice if someone in Washington actually cared about jobs

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1

And it wasn’t much of a recovery to start with. Employment has risen from its low point, but it has grown no faster than the adult population. And the plight of the unemployed continues to worsen: more than six million Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, and more than four million have been jobless for more than a year.

It would be nice if someone in Washington actually cared.

It’s not as if our political class is feeling complacent. On the contrary, D.C. economic discourse is saturated with fear: fear of a debt crisis, of runaway inflation, of a disastrous plunge in the dollar. Scare stories are very much on politicians’ minds.

Yet none of these scare stories reflect anything that is actually happening, or is likely to happen. And while the threats are imaginary, fear of these imaginary threats has real consequences: an absence of any action to deal with the real crisis, the suffering now being experienced by millions of jobless Americans and their families

[Tx4obama]

7. The Maddow Bikini Graph one that shows Bush as red and Obama as blue is my favorite

p.s. I can't find the newest one that includes April ;(

Edited to add....

Here's the one with April added but the graph is missing the dates at the bottom