Jobs: Bush Versus Obama

From Think Progress, "Private sector job creation under President Obama has far exceeded private sector job creation under President Bush. 40 months into his presidential term, there are currently more private sector jobs in the economy than when Obama came into office. At the same point in President Bush’s term, the total number of private sector jobs was still down 1.7 percent from where it began.

The numbers are even starker when measuring each president’s record from the moment job creation returned. Private sector job creation returned in February of 2010, the 13th month of President Obama’s term. Since then, the economy has added 4.3 million private sector jobs, a 4 percent increase.

Under President Bush, the economy stopped shedding private sector jobs in July of 2003, fully 30 months into his administration. From that point until May of 2004, the economy added just 1.5 million private sector jobs, an increase of only 1.4 percent."

Andrew Leonard notes, "But the real eye-opener comes when we compare Obama’s numbers to George W. Bush’s. In Bush’s first term, the economy shed 913,000 private sector jobs! 913,000! The only thing that saved Bush’s first term from being a complete economic disaster, in terms of employment, was robust public sector growth: The economy added 900,000 government jobs. One wonders: Without the massive growth in the public sector during Bush’s first term, would he have been reelected?"

The only thing that didn't make Bush's first term job creation numbers a complete disaster was the growth of public workers - the government. Obama accomplished much better total job growth in his first term, even with an unprecedented decline in the number of public workers.

And, in general, the economy creates more jobs under Democrats - 42 million during Democratic administrations versus 24 million during Republican administrations.

Whichever period we choose to dissect, we can see the country is better off under the Democrats. Plus, the idea that President Obama has performed poorly is highly misguided. No doubt, we'd all rather see more robust job creation, to bring the unemployment rate down toward a more respectable 5 or 6 percent. But, if the millions of jobs created in Obama's first term is some colossal failure, then the nonexistent job growth during Bush's first term is the absolute worst performance we've ever seen. This is surely not an endorsement for giving the White House back to the Republicans whom have performed so comparatively poorly.

So, if the economy is the important issue we all should be focused on during this election (as Republicans seem to indicate), based on their past performance versus the current President's performance, the only choice is Barack Obama.