EXPLAINING JOB NUMBERS TO TRUMP FANS
Can’t we all just get along? Conservative
friends of the blogger who glance at these posts always seem so…mad.
Let us strive to find common ground. For
example, are monthly job gains good so far under Emperor Trump?
Yes.
Are they as good as under President
Obama, notorious Kenyan interloper, according to Trump?
They are not.
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This is what we
liberals refer to as “using facts.”
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We of the liberal persuasion will do our best to
outline relevant facts. Let us begin with a quick perusal of the Bureau of
Labor Statistics reports to form a picture of the growth of the job market in
recent years.
Unless I have made some minor error in addition
the total number of jobs added each year, once the Great Recession ended, would
be as follows:
2011: 2,074,000
2012: 2,176,000
2013: 2,301,000
2014: 3,004,000
2015: 2,720,000
2016: 2,345,000
2017: 2,114,000
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I added a chart later, which covers all of Trump's time in office. |
Of course, conservatives once insisted job
numbers couldn’t possibly be that good. You may even remember that happy day
when Candidate Trump claimed 93 million Americans were without jobs.
That claim was so far-fetched it seemed no one
who could count on fingers and toes and come up with anything close to “twenty”
would fall for it.
Yet many in Trumpistan did.
Suppose this claim had been true. Even if
we cut Emperor Donald I some slack, even if we ignored the entry of a couple
million young people into the labor force this year, even if we simply
subtracted the number of jobs created in 2017, it would mean at least 91
million Americans still lack employ.
Ten thousand baby
boomers retired every day.
Of course, I know my conservative friends like
to say the job gains under Obama didn’t hold up because the labor
participation rate plunged. Magazillions of Americans, they insisted,
had given up looking for work. So, we can check Bureau of Labor
Statistics and see what we find. That participation rate did drop from 66.2% in
January 2008 to a 62.7% in December 2015.
I would point out to my Trump-loving friends
that 10,000 baby boomers retired every day. I would do my best to explain how
this would impact the labor participation rate. Senator Rob Portman, an
admitted Republican, said as much, but in a different context, in a 2014
speech. This figure, 10,000, was reported first in the Wall Street
Journal. It was then analyzed by the Washington Post.
The Post agreed Portman’s figure was accurate, meaning 3.5
million Baby Boomers were bowing out of the job market every year. My friends
of conservative bent did not wish to hear such math.
It made them angry when I kept citing figures
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In fact, who can forget Candidate Trump insisting that Obama’s
good job numbers were one of the “biggest hoaxes in politics.” The monthly
numbers remained a hoax till he took office. Then the numbers became, in some
magical fashion, real. Press Secretary Sean Spicer said so himself, as soon as the first good reports were
issued for Trump. The numbers “may have been phony” before, Spicer informed
stunned reporters.
They were “very real” now.
Again, this humble blogger had a hard time
believing anyone could fall for such math-defying dung.
The economy had shed
4,000,000 jobs.
Today we find ourselves in a position to study
the job numbers for the first year of the reign of Emperor Donald I. Technically,
he should not get credit for all gains in January 2017 since he took over after
19 ½ days had passed. Still, we shall allow him all those gains. (We are if
nothing else, gracious in our assessment.)
As we can quickly see, if we grab our
calculators and start punching buttons, Obama added more jobs five years in
succession (2012-2016) than the Donald I in 2017. Finally, we should disabuse
our conservative friends of the idea that Trump “inherited a mess” when he took
office. For 76 months in succession, jobs had been added to the U.S. economy, starting in October 2010.
By comparison, Mr. Obama did inherit a
mess. If we consider the last eleven months of 2008 and the first 19 ½ days of
January 2009 (assuming Obama could not cause job losses till he took the oath
of office at noon on January 20), we learn that he took over an economy
which had just shed 4,072,000 jobs.
Even Donald J. Trump can probably tell. Losing
4,072,000 jobs in one year is worse than gaining 2,000,000 + jobs annually for
six years.
What does that leave Trump to brag about when
comparing job numbers? True, gains could strengthen in months ahead. He could
outperform Obama in the end. We cannot know. We can, however, knock another
plank out of the argument that economic miracles have been performed since he
took office.
For those who love Trump, we also find that
labor participation rates have ticked down slightly in the last year.
Summing up, again focusing on facts, as far as job creation is concerned, Emperor
Donald is doing a good job.
He’s not doing significantly better than the man
who preceded him in the White House. In fact, he’s doing a bit worse.
And, just for fun, remember that Mr. Obama was
never accused of paying off porn stars during his time in office.
