Obama’s Job Creation: Lagging 6 of the Last 8 Presidents

The US economy has created 5.3 million jobs since President Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009 (although we’ve had 10.9 million jobs created since the economic bottom 57 months ago). Starting from Obama’s first month in office, with the country deep in recession, the labor market has come a long way to where it is now. Even still, the growth in non-farm payrolls during his administration lags behind that of most recent presidents.

via Josh Zumbrun of the Wall Street Journal:

Of course, the economy is much larger today than it was 50 years ago, and so it’s also worth looking at the change in percentage terms. Here, too, Mr. Obama has passed the Bush and Ford presidencies. In percentage terms, he falls behind Mr. Kennedy. (In an earlier post, we looked at the previous eight periods of economic expansion. The current recovery ranks fifth out of eight in terms of total job creation, or sixth out of eight in percentage terms.)

Of course, presidents don’t deserve sole credit (or blame) for the job losses or gains during their time in office, but it is one of the key factors upon which they’re judged by history.

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