Figures Lie and Liars Figure – Labor Stats

by Jack

We hear an awful lot about the lack of jobs and creating jobs these days. The Obama Administration is laying the blame on the lack of jobs on the previous president (Bush) and the GOP is attacking Obama for a failure to create jobs and lying about Pres. Bush’s track record. (Chart on right shows Obama’s unemployment numbers highlighted in yellow. Click on chart for larger view)

Who’s telling the truth or is this a case of both sides spinning the numbers?

Last week, VP Biden spoke Tuesday in a wood-paneled second-floor bar at the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South at a fundraiser for Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY-01). He began his remarks at 1:42 p.m. and spoke for 20 minutes.

“We’ve done a lot in the last 20 months,” VPOTUS said. “The economy has grown four quarters in a row, not what it needs to, but it’s growing, it’s not shrinking. Just since January, 860,000 private sector jobs, not nearly enough. But guess what? That’s more jobs than were created in the entire eight years of the Bush Administration. That’s factual.” This was pretty much a snow job, everything was subject to different criteria and data and how you averaged it all out.

Now if we go over to any number of pro-democrat websites, in this case its Ecopolitology.org, we hear a similar story, but with even better stats! “If you haven’t heard yet, new data out by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that in 2010 the economy saw an increase of 1.1 million jobs. But what is a number like that without a reference point, right? Turns out that if you look back at the same stats over the past decade, you can see that is more than the total number of jobs created in Bush’s 8 years as president.”

If you have nothing better to do for an hour or so go net searching for, “Who created more jobs, Bush or Obama?” You’re in for a a ton of schmoozing and you’ll find above disinformation like Biden fed the partisans repeated a lot…a whole lot! Why? Because these sites tend to feed off each others work. They don’t go to a credible source like the Bureau of Labor, they go to another partisan site and repeat what they have.

Venture now to Wikipedia.com (a more independent source) and you get a whole other set of “facts”: Under Bush, private employment shrank by 673,000 jobs, federal employment grew by 50,000 jobs, and government employment grew by 1,753,000 jobs. If we add 50k jobs to 1.753M and subtract 673k that’s works out to a net gain 1.13M.

Under Obama, the private sector has shed some 2.9 million jobs while the federal government has grown by 40,000 (after growing massively, the federal workforce shrank throughout the summer). Total government jobs, however, shrank by 357,000 jobs, mainly because of cuts at the state and local levels. This is a net loss of 3.297M jobs, huh? I suspect something’s wrong with this data too.

If you check the latest bureau of labor statistics and you see that Obama had a net gain of 670,000, not this 1.1 million democrats are tossing around, so they have been telling a lie repeated so often it seems like fact.

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 (Sep is the end of the fiscal year for feds)

(Chart shows growth in employment over the years, click on it for a larger picture)

The May numbers look pretty good, except in that month several strikes were settled and that skewed the employment numbers. Same thing happened in 2011 with the settlement of the telecommunication strike. If Obama wants to take credit for settling the strikes then those May numbers become more relevant, but nobody is saying that are they?

What is easier to understand and less subject to manipulation is the rate of unemployment, as determined by the Bureau of Labor.

In the last 20 months if you added up each month and averaged that out you would have an unemployment rate of 9.38%. The current rate of unemployment from the Bureau of Labor is 9.1% for Sept. That is only a difference of .28%, you tell me if that is anything to brag about after 20 months and all the billions in so-called job stimulus money Obama has spent? I don’t know how you see it, but it looks pretty pathetic to me. In fact it looks like we’ve not gained anything, except debt and that’s hurt us, not helped us. Look at that chart on top of the page, there’s really next no change, is there? Obama and the dem’s plans from Pelosi and Reid have been a complete failure. That’s not spin, it’s a supportable fact.

RNC CHAIRMAN MICHAEL STEELE: “For close to a full year the American people have been forced to watch and in many cases bear the burden of our ever increasing national unemployment rate which unfortunately remained in the double digits throughout the month of December. More than 85,000 Americans lost their jobs in the month of December, meaning more than 2.8 million Americans have lost their jobs since the stimulus passed, and the national unemployment rate remains at 10 percent.
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/bush-created-jobs-obama-didnt-so-wheres-the-outrage/blog-232785/

LEADING DEMS ATTACKED BUSH WHEN MILLIONS OF JOBS WERE BEING CREATED …
In 2003, Over 87,000 Jobs Were Created. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

* But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Criticized 2003 Job Creation As “Far From Enough.” “The slight increase in jobs last month is wonderful news for 57,000 Americans. But the 2.1 million Americans who have been actively looking for work for more than two years … know that it is far from enough …” (Rep. Nancy Pelosi, “Pelosi:

‘Slight Jobs Increase Far From Enough — We Must Do More to Create Jobs and Growth,'” Press Release, 10/3/03
)
In 2004, Over 2 Million Jobs Were Created. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

* But In 2004, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) Claimed Bush “Created A Climate … Where The Number of Jobs Is Not Growing.” “This President has created a climate in this country where the number of jobs is not growing. It did not have to be that way.” (Sen. Dick Durbin, Congressional Record, 10/08/04, p. S10764)

In 2005, Over 2.5 Million Jobs Were Created. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

* But Pelosi Called 2005 Job Creation Numbers “Anemic.” “Today’s anemic jobs numbers confirm that President Bush has still failed to create a single new private-sector job since he became President.” (Rep. Nancy Pelosi, “Pelosi: ‘Today’s Anemic Jobs Numbers Confirm the Administration Has Failed to Create a Single New Private-Sector Job,'” Press Release, 6/3/05)

In 2006, Over 2.1 Million Jobs Were Created. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10
)
* But Pelosi Claimed Bush Policies “Favored The Privileged Few At The Expense Of America’s Working Families.” (Rep. Nancy Pelosi, “Democrats Will Restore the Economic Security of America’s Working Families,” Press Release, 9/22/06)

By 2007, 5.7 Million Jobs Had Been Created Under Bush. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

* But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) Claimed Bush Had “Shameful History Of Losing American Jobs.” (Sen. Harry Reid, “Reid: As Unemployment Reaches Two-year High, American Jobs Are The Latest Casualty Of Bush’s Failed Economic Policies,” Press Release, 1/4/08)

THEN PROMISED THEIR $787 BILLION STIMULUS WOULD CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS

In February, Obama Signed $787 Billion Stimulus Bill, Claiming It Would “Fix The Economy.” “President Obama on Tuesday signed the $787 billion stimulus package … ‘We have begun the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time,’ Obama said, calling the legislation ‘the beginning of the end’ of what needed to be done to fix the economy.” (Michael A. Fletcher, “Obama Leaves D.C. To Sign Stimulus Bill,” The Washington Post, 2/18/09)

And Obama Pledged That Stimulus Would Create 3.5 Million Jobs By End Of 2010.”[W]hat makes this recovery plan so important is not just that it will create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years …” (President Barack Obama, Remarks At The Signing Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act, Denver, CO, 2/17/09)

SO DEMS NEED TO CREATE 6.3 MILLION JOBS IN 2010 TO MEET THEIR OWN STANDARD, A LEVEL OF JOB GROWTH THAT HAS NEVER BEEN ACHIEVED

2.8 MILLION Jobs Lost Since Obama’s Signed His $787 Billion Stimulus In February 2009. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 12/10/09)
* Including 85,000 More Jobs Lost Last Month. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/8/09)

In Addition To 3.5 MILLION Jobs Obama Promised Would Be Created By His $787 Billion Stimulus By December 2010. (President Barack Obama, Remarks At The Signing Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act, Denver, CO, 2/17/09)

That Equals 6.3 MILLION Jobs Dems Need To Create This Year Alone To Declare Economic Success, A Level Of Job Growth That Has Never Been Achieved in American History. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

* Because In 1946, 4.3 MILLION Jobs Were Created, Largest Job In A Single Calendar Year In American History. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

KNOWING AMERICANS WILL JUDGE THEM ON JOB CREATION, AT LEAST ONE DEM IS OUTRAGED OVER SQUANDERED 2009

Obama Says “The Yardstick Should Be … Am I Creating These Jobs?” (Sam Stein, “Obama: Judge Me On The Jobs I Create,” The Huffington Post, 12/15/08)

* Pelosi: “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs … We Will Measure Our Success In That Way; And Hopefully The American People Will, Too, In The Next Election.” (Greg Sargent, “Pelosi: Judge Dems’ Success On Whether We Create ‘Jobs, Jobs, Jobs,'” “The Plum Line” Blog, 12/3/09)