The September jobs report was just released and demonstrates that America is on a far slower path to recovery than anyone originally predicted. Despite this, the shedding of government jobs cloaks a glimmer of hope: more private sector jobs have been created this year than during the entire Bush administration. Read that again: 2010 has had more private job creation than during the entire 8 year tenure of George W. Bush.
True, it’s still a lot like being a judge at a skunk stinking competition, but maybe, just maybe, there is a glimmer of hope.
This is the 9th straight month of private sector job growth in the midst of a devastating recession that has put a serious strain mostly on the poor and middle class. There has been a total of 863,000 private sector jobs created in 2010, exceeding the total created under the Bush/Cheney regime…
The numbers are still not good though. Companies added 64,000 jobs last month, but after the loss of 159,000 government jobs at all levels, there was a net shedding of ~95,000. The fading influence of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA or the economic stimulus) is causing much of the strain on the job market, as state and local governments still strained by poor revenue are cutting positions, particularly in education.
This is also the central agent that has caused the overall net job loss for the last four months, following a net gain for the first 5 months of the year. The net jobs gained during 2010 stands at 613,000, which is over half of the 1,080,000 jobs were created during the entire time George W. Bush was in office.
2010 Total Jobs Gained or Lost
January 14,000
February 39,000
March 208,000
April 313,000
May 432,000
June -175,000
July -66,000
August -57,000
September -95,000
After modest gains in January and February, March was the month with the greatest job gains in 3 years (since March 2007), and April 2010 was the biggest monthly job gain in 4 years (since March 2006). Beyond this, the increase in jobs from March to April is counter to the jobs trends of the last 10 years, where according to the average, March has gained 61,000 jobs and April only 32,000. The huge gain of 432,000 jobs in May 2010 is the largest net gain of jobs since March 2000 when Bill Clinton was president.
A commonly cited article by conservative pundits to soften the blow on this data is a Wall Street Journal piece titled, Bush On Jobs: The Worst Track Record On Record, which inaccurately states that Bush created 3 million jobs. The actual figure is 1.08 million (all jobs added minus jobs lost), but the conservative leaning WSJ has yet to issue a retraction, correction, or clarification.
In the chart below found on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, find the monthly statistics of total jobs created or lost since January 2000.
| Year | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
| 2000 | 249 | 121 | 472 | 286 | 225 | -46 | 163 | 3 | 122 | -11 | 231 | 138 |
| 2001 | -16 | 61 | -30 | -281 | -44 | -128 | -125 | -160 | -244 | -325 | -292 | -178 |
| 2002 | -132 | -147 | -24 | -85 | -7 | 45 | -97 | -16 | -55 | 126 | 8 | -156 |
| 2003 | 83 | -158 | -212 | -49 | -6 | -2 | 25 | -42 | 103 | 203 | 18 | 124 |
| 2004 | 150 | 43 | 338 | 250 | 310 | 81 | 47 | 121 | 160 | 351 | 64 | 132 |
| 2005 | 136 | 240 | 142 | 360 | 169 | 246 | 369 | 195 | 63 | 84 | 334 | 158 |
| 2006 | 262 | 326 | 304 | 174 | 31 | 69 | 232 | 141 | 100 | 43 | 201 | 177 |
| 2007 | 194 | 104 | 239 | 92 | 149 | 55 | -20 | -71 | 52 | 86 | 128 | 70 |
| 2008 | -10 | -50 | -33 | -149 | -231 | -193 | -210 | -334 | -458 | -554 | -728 | -673 |
| 2009 | -779 | -726 | -753 | -528 | -387 | -515 | -346 | -212 | -225 | -224 | 64 | -109 |
| 2010 | 14 | 39 | 208 | 313 | 432 | -175 | -66 | -57 | -95 |
Focusing in on the latter part of the monthly chart of jobs created/lost above, we are confronted with the famous “Bikini Graph”, which demonstrates the sharp reversal of job losses that has taken place after Bush left office and Obama entered it (latest version available to April 2010).
