REMEMBER WHEN Donald J. Trump
claimed President Obama was terrible at creating jobs? Remember when Trump insisted 93 million Americans were out of work?
That figure would have been even
higher—but Trump had five or six people employed searching for Obama’s
birth certificate. Eventually, they gave up, and never bothered to
check records in Hawaii.
Even Trump finally admitted he had
been full of dung for years, claiming Obama was born in Kenya.
As for his years of lies, Trump blamed it all on Hillary.
She started the rumor he insisted. His lips just kept moving.
He was as innocent as a ventriloquist dummy.
ANYWAY, TODAY’S TOPIC is jobs!
After sixteen full months in office, it’s not too early to check out the job creating magic of President Donald J. “I Get All the Credit for Job Growth Success” Trump. First, let all of us on the liberal side of the math fence admit that numbers for May 2018 were good. A total of 223,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy. Unemployment dropped to 3.8%, the lowest level in eighteen years.
After sixteen full months in office, it’s not too early to check out the job creating magic of President Donald J. “I Get All the Credit for Job Growth Success” Trump. First, let all of us on the liberal side of the math fence admit that numbers for May 2018 were good. A total of 223,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy. Unemployment dropped to 3.8%, the lowest level in eighteen years.
Naturally, Trump took 137% of the credit. (He sucks at math.) Meanwhile, right-wing pundits pouted because the mainstream media” refused to praise the
president effusively enough. (They also suck at math.) If Trump “created” nearly three million
jobs in his first sixteen full months in office, why wouldn’t The New York Times splash the story
across its front page with headlines six inches high, in letters of gold?
F-ing “mainstream media!” Full of lies and more lies! It makes Trump fans so mad they start polishing all their guns.
Alas, part of the reason we of the liberal
persuasion so often laugh at Trump and his sycophantic Fox News band is that we do
not possess the memories of hamsters. We remember how Trump reacted when
job numbers—the official numbers of the Bureau of Labor Statistics—under Obama were
good.
In those days all the good numbers were
“rigged.” You can refresh your memory if you like and
read a story in the “fake news” Washington
Post. In this story the Post quotes
unnamed sources….
No, wait.
The Post
quotes Trump. They quote all the times Trump said jobs numbers under
Obama were “phony,” “the biggest joke there is in this country.”
When
unemployment dropped below 5% in early 2016, Trump wasn’t buying the math. He
insisted the number of people looking for jobs was much higher, possibly higher
than at any point during the Great Depression. “Don’t believe those phony
numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment,” he said. Actually,
they were, “As high as 35 — as in fact, I heard recently, 42 percent.”
THIS IS NOT A DIFFICULT MATH PROBLEM to sort out. One
need only consult Bureau of Labor Statistics charts to ascertain the truth. In
the last sixteen full months Obama was in office 3,281,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy (September 2015-December 2016). Even Press
Secretary Pinocchio Sanders, if handed a calculator and shown by a reporter which buttons to push, could probably divide by 16.
Try it yourself.
That would mean Obama had been adding 205,062 jobs per month when he left office. That is what we liberals like to call “the math.”
That would mean Obama had been adding 205,062 jobs per month when he left office. That is what we liberals like to call “the math.”
 |
| The official numbers. |
Then Trump took over! Now you were going to
see the U.S. economy boom! He was going to clean the “mess” he inherited right
up! Looking at his first sixteen full months in office we see Trump has
added 2,966,000 jobs.
Trump fans can look at those numbers with
googly eyes. They can close their left eye. They can close their right. They can
squint. Facts remain facts. Math is still math. The 3,281,000 jobs added by
Obama in his last sixteen full months are more than the 2,966,000
added in the first sixteen full months by Trump.
So far, Donald J. Trump is adding 185,375 jobs per month.
So far, Donald J. Trump is adding 185,375 jobs per month.
No doubt, diehard Trumpsters will quibble about details. I purposely left January 2017 out of the mix. Obama was in
office for 19.5 days, Trump for 11.5. We could split the gains for the
month: 259,000 jobs added. That would mean 8,354.84 jobs were added each day of
the month. We would credit Obama for 19.5 x 8354.84 jobs added = 162,919 jobs.
We could credit Trump with 11.5 x 8354.84 jobs = 96,081.
That would give Obama 3,443,919 jobs added in
his last 16.629 months = 207,103 jobs per month.
Trump would stand at 3,062,081 jobs added in
his first 16.371 months = 187,043 jobs a month so far.
IN THE MEANTIME, WE LIBERALS cannot help but
feel sad for the 90 million Americans still
without jobs.
Wait, Mr. Liberal! Did you just claim that
almost 90 million Americans are still
unemployed!
Yes.
And I am quoting Trump. If we take his claim of 93 million unemployed, made during an interview with Sarah Palin in February 2016, and subtract jobs added since he took over, what do we see?
Yes.
And I am quoting Trump. If we take his claim of 93 million unemployed, made during an interview with Sarah Palin in February 2016, and subtract jobs added since he took over, what do we see?
93,000,000
unemployed under Obama
-3,062,081 jobs added
under Trump
89,937,919
Americans still desperately seeking work!!!
As a patriotic American, I think I can all agree this
plague of joblessness is truly terrible. I hope President Trump will stop
dawdling along and pick up the pace and get these tens of millions back to
work. If he can’t speed up the process—which is slower than it was under Obama—it will
be another 30 years before we get everyone who lacked employment under Mr.
Obama back to work.
I know. I know. Trump loyalists will quibble
again. What about the Labor Participation Rate, they will ask! What about all
the people who gave up looking for
work when Obama was in office?
Really, it’s kind of fun. Go back and watch Fox
News pundits bitch about the drop in the Labor
Participation Rate under Obama.
Obama was a failure at creating jobs, they
loved to claim.
So we need to check and see how Trump is doing
putting all the hopeless jobs seekers back to work.
Damn!
In January 2008, the Labor Participation Rate
stood at 66.2 percent. By January 2009, when Obama took office, the rate had declined
to 65.7. Then Obama killed 90 million jobs all by himself.
By January 2017, when Trump came to town to
drain the swamp, the rate had fallen to 62.9.
Obama sucked, at least according to Trump and
Fox News. I could point out the total absurdity of this line; but
the math would be much too complex for the typical Fox News fan. Check out how many Baby Boomers retire every day and you can see where most of the drop has come from.)
 |
| Are you kidding! |
NOW WE HAVE A NEW PRESIDENT. Donald J. Trump has
had more than sixteen months to get the nation back to work, to coax depressed
workers off the sidelines. I think we can assume the Labor Participation rate must be close to 99%!
And…as of today, the rate is…um…62.7 percent!
My god! According to Trump’s own logic, Trump
really, really sucks at creating jobs.
I don't know if my blog has a flaw of some kind; but the only comments I tend to get are via Facebook where I post links. I was surprised, however, when even someone who wasn't definitely a Trump fan decided to quibble with the numbers. I will leave his name out, but he wrote:
ReplyDelete"I like data as much, if not more, than the next person, but if you're going to compare Trump's first sixteen months in office with anything, it would have to be Obama's first sixteen months in office.
"Stop playing with numbers, they obviously aren't you're strong suit. Go put this away before you cut yourself.
"There are more than enough legitimate Trump failures. Muddying the waters with something that is clearly not one of them isn't helping anyone get the president they want."
So I decided, I didn't want to cut myself; but I would get some additional numbers. You can see them below.
Here are the number of jobs added by year, once the Great Recession ended.
ReplyDelete2011 2,092,000
2012 2,142,000
2013 2,302,000
2014 2,998,000
2015 2,713,000
2016 2,240,000
2017 2,188,000
This would mean Trump did worse in 2017 than Obama in the four previous years, and only marginally better than in 2011 and 2012.
We could then look at data (all of these numbers can be found at the Bureau of Labor Statistics websites) for 2007 and 2008.
ReplyDeleteWe could easily go back and see which president "inherited" a mess. Trump says it was him. We could, if we were not intellectually lazy like President Pussy Grabber, consult Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2007. Then we would see that the economy began to stall that year, with George W. adding only 1,148,000 jobs for the year or 95,667 per month.
We could then look at 2008, with only 8,000 jobs added in January, and then 11 months of catastrophic decline. In those 11 months the U.S. economy shed 3,577,000 jobs, meaning for the year the loss would be 297,417 jobs per month. In January, 2009, we would have to give W. the blame for all losses in the first 19.5 days, since Obama took the oath of office only at noon on January 20.
That month an additional 787,000 jobs were lost or 25,387 per day. That would mean 19.5 x 25,387 = 495,047 had vanished before Obama took over.
And if you do the basic math, you will see the total number of jobs lost in a little less than a year before Barrack Obama took office would be.....get ready Trump fans....4,072,047.
Now let me note in closing my math tutorial session, that inheriting an economy that has just shed more than four million jobs (I told the "math denier," who soon added proof he was a Trump fan) would, I'm sure you will see, qualify as "inheriting a mess."
ReplyDeleteIt would be much, much, much, much, much better to take over an economy that had added more jobs for four years in a row than you, the Trumpster, would add in your first year.
Them would be the facts.