Obama Created More Jobs In One Year Than Bush Created In Eight

By Alex Seitz-Wald

This morning, the Labor Department released its employment data for December, showing that the U.S. economy ended the year by adding 113,000 private sector jobs, knocking the unemployment rate down sharply from 9.8 percent to 9.4 percent — its lowest rate since July 2009. The “surprising drop — which was far better than the modest step-down economists had forecast — was the steepest one-month fall since 1998.” October and November’s jobs numbers were also revised upward by almost 80,000 each. Still, 14.5 million Americans remain unemployed, and jobs will have to be created much faster in coming months for the country to pull itself out of the economic doldrums.

Responding the jobs report, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) noted that President Obama and the Democratic Congress have created “more jobs in 2010 than President Bush did over eight years.”

Indeed, from February 2001, Bush’s first full month in office, through January 2009, his last, the economy added just 1 million jobs. By contrast, in 2010 alone, the economy added at least 1.1 million jobs. This chart, produced by Pelosi’s office, demonstrates the difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration on jobs:

As the Wall Street Journal noted in the last month of Bush’s term, the former president had the “worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.” And job creation under Bush was anemic long before the recession began. Bush’s supply-side economics “fostered the weakest jobs and income growth in more than six decades,” along with “sluggish business investment and weak gross domestic product growth,” the Center for American Progress’ Joshua Picker explained. “On every major measurement” of income and employment, “the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms,” the National Journal’s Ron Brownstein observed, parsing Census data.

M.C.L Comment: If you like this news send an email to Jane Hamster, Cenk Uygur and the other members of the Young or any other member in the progressive media that demobilize the base so instead of another two years of progress we gotta sit through two years of the Republicans jerking the country around. I hate to tell those progressives that took their ball and went home, I told you so but I told you so. The Republicans are hell bent dragging this country into the 19th level of hell just so they can defeat President Obama and finish the job they started under George W.Bush, but what did some members on our side do? Got out and vote on election night? No some on our side wanted to get into a circular pissing match with other progressives over is President Obama liberal enough? And those people I mention egged on this not because they had legitimate policy disagreement they wanted the clicks to their blogs and views on their YouTube channel. Hopefully we progressives come to realize that we got two years to right this ship, because we got a segment of this population who's willingly to hand this country over back to the very interest that almost got us into another great depression because they hate having a black president.

Latest Jobs Report Refutes Republican Claim That Stimulus Created Only Government Jobs

By Pat Garofalo Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy added a better than expected 290,000 jobs last month. The BLS also revised the

jobs number for both February and March upwards, putting both of those months into the black in terms of job creation. (Due to 805,00 discouraged workers “feeling better about their prospects” and resuming their search for work, the unemployment rate actually ticked up to 9.9 percent.)

The continued turnaround of the labor market is a strong sign that the economic stimulus package passed last year is doing what it is supposed to. But today’s report also refutes one of the favorite Republican talking points about the stimulus, which is that it only preserved government jobs:

– Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN): These are mostly government jobs, you know…The idea that government grows the economy when all they really do is extract money from taxpayers, bring it into the bureaucracy and put it back out into the economy on a political agenda is not growth.

– Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY): The stimulus bill has done “little or nothing” to stimulate the private sector. “It probably did save a lot of state government jobs.”

– Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS): State government has benefited by the stimulus package, because it’s poured in billions of dollars. The problem is we need private sector jobs.

– Rep. John Boehner (R-OH): Most of the so-called jobs that have been saved or created are government jobs, even though the President promised that 90 percent of these jobs would be private sector jobs.

– Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA): We’ve got to begin focusing not just on jobs, but on private sector jobs.

So the GOP should be pleased to note that, of the 290,000 jobs created in April, 231,000 of them were in the private sector. The private sector has actually added 523,000 new jobs in 2010.

his includes 44,000 manufacturing jobs, which is the most manufacturing jobs added to the U.S. economy since August, 1998. Overall, April was the strongest month for jobs growth since March, 2006. For the sake of comparison, here’s the change in monthly job loss or gain since December, 2007: