Who's a Better Job Creator: Trump or Obama?

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. 

Okay, he said, Obama was born in America. Even Fox News had to carry that story for once.

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.

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.”

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.

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?

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.

For more “fun” with Trump see: A Year of Robert Mueller.