Most estimates in advance of today's new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggested the economy added about 210,000 jobs in February. As it turns out, we did even better than that.
The U.S. economy added 227,000 jobs last month, while the overall unemployment rate remained steady at 8.3%. At first blush, that may sound discouraging, but the details matter -- the jobless rate remained the same, despite the increase, because "more people entered the workforce in search of jobs."
And that's what we want -- it's evidence of a healthier economy.
As is always the case, there was a gap between the private and public sectors. Businesses added 233,000 jobs last month, while budget cuts forced the public sector to shed another 6,000 jobs.
Nevertheless, it's hard not to feel encouraged about the recent data. Indeed, perhaps the most striking aspect to today's report were the revisions: job totals from December showed an additional 20,000 jobs (from 203,000 to 223,000), while January added an additional 41,000 (from 243,000 to 284,000).
The result is good news: excluding temporary Census Bureau jobs, the last three months have been the best for American job creation since the start of the Great Recession.
The overall economy has now added over 1.2 million jobs in just the last six months, and nearly 3.4 million jobs over the last three years.
And with that, here's the homemade chart I run on the first Friday of every month, showing monthly job losses since the start of the Great Recession. The image makes a distinction -- red columns point to monthly job totals under the Bush administration, while blue columns point to job totals under the Obama administration.
Update: Here's another chart, this one showing monthly job losses/gains in just the private sector since the start of the Great Recession.
Leave a Comment:
The United States is currently suffering from its longest stretch of unemployment greater than 8 percent since the Great Depression and this is projected to last until 2014. Even worse, the share of unemployed American workers who have been looking for work for more than six months topped 40 percent for the first time since 1948 as shown here:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2012/03/persistently-high-unemployment-in.html
This level is nearly double the normal historical level of long term unemployed and, as shown in the article, certain American demographics have suffered more than others.
As The New York Times' Dr. Paul Krugman has noted at both his blog and in his column, if Repbulican governors had not slashed state spending so dramatically - in Michigan, to the point of producing a budget surplus - and fired public workers as a matter of ideology, the recovery would be much further along than it is. And yet even as the recovery struggles to move into a slightly higher hear, we hear calls from the right demanding ever more cuts in government spending - a sure fire way to shove us back into recession as David Cameron's austerity-is-everything government in Britain is discovering.
Why is Mitt Romney allowed to outright LIE about this. In his stump speech he says "President Obama has not created a single job". He says "we are losing jobs and the economy is failing". Is he so robotic that he is programmed for a speech from 3 years ago or is it the approach of not letting facts get in the way of some good red meat? If he says that in a debate and the President refutes the claim with FACTS, how will he respond. Maybe this is why he wont do MTP or any Sunday show that is not the friendly confines of Fox News.
They are lying about this and smokescreening like crazy with all the attacks on women's reproductive freedoms/rights because they do not want people to know this. It's no coincidence that all these anti-women bills are popping up like a plague of locusts...they cannot talk truthfully about the economy so the less said, and the more smokescreened, the better (so they seem to think).
The reality is that the absent objections from the GOP in 2009, the stimulus would have been much larger and the road to economic recovery would have likely been complete with an increasing tax base to mitigate the increased stimulus. Check out what Mark Zandi said at http://bit.ly/yDdDyA .
As such it is imperative that every clear thinking American adopt the truthful narrative that while it is great that the economy is now recovering, Republican intransigence and obstructionism is directly responsible for the high unemployment rate. If the president’s increased stimulus and jobs programs were not blocked by the Republicans, unemployment would be much lower and the economy much more vibrant.
The graph is missing the X-axis scale. It needs to show the range to be convincing. I know what it is, but to convince others it needs to be there. Please fix it.
Cue the Fox commentators to try and attribute this improving economy to anything but President Obama.
Could you please do the same graph for the first term of President Bush.
Using BLS data if we compared his first term to President Obama. Bush LOST 2.716 MILLION private sector jobs by this time in the first term.
Please, when comparing first term to first term this is an important point. Yet Bush still was re-elected.
Again with the proofiness?? Enough already!
More proofi-ness?? Enough already!
Simple math. U6 unemployment - the number that is to most comprehensive in terms of measuring total unemployment - was at 15.1% IN February '09. That's the first full month of the Obama Presidency.
February '12 came in at 14.9%. That includes addition to the size of the workforce. Plain and simple, there are less unemployed now than there were three years ago. Period. If you cannot see that as a gain, I recommend remedial math.
The problem with this article is the choice to only showcase the portion of the Bush presidency showing job loss. It is intentional and has the aim of making the gains during the Obama presidency look grater by comparison. However, if this pace continues he will only have added around 100,000 jobs net by the end of his presidency. A graph which is complete would be far more accurate and was therefore not used, as it would hurt the bias of the writer.
The population grows by about 284,000 a month and the labor force grows by about 142,000 a month based on the population growth. At best the last 12 months show us just stable in terms of jobs, after population growth is taken into account. Even the last 3 months only show a recovery that will take about 5 years to reach 5% unemployment. The jobs statistics are a mark of shame over the last 4 years and no-one should use them to claim credit for anything. Most post-recessions have job growth far higher. Obama still has not recovered to the uneployment rate he had on the day he took office (7.8) that had climbed considerably from the 6.5% on the day he was elected. If his policies are so "good" why did unempoyment climb when he was clearly the predected president in early 2008 and the president elect in late 2008.