The right measure and comparison for Obama’s record is to compare the recovery not to the recession, but to 11 previous recoveries since the Great Depression. In those recoveries, the economy recovered all jobs lost during the previous recession within 25 months after the prior jobs peak (or recession start). So the job effects of prior post-recessions have lasted an average of about two years. But under President Obama, at the end of his first term in January 2013, 61 months after the prior jobs peak, more than 5 years, we still had not recovered all of the recession’s job losses. In January 2013, there were an estimated 134.8 million American workers employed, still down more than 3.2 million jobs from the prior peak of 138 million in January, 2008. That included the longest period since the Great Depression with unemployment above 8%, 43 months, from February 2009, when Obama’s so-called stimulus costing nearly $1 trillion was passed, until August 2012. It also included the longest period since the Great Depression with unemployment at 9.0% or above, 30 months, from April 2009, until September 2011. In fact, during the entire 65 years from January 1948 to January 2013, there were no previous months, before Obama’s reign of error, with unemployment over 8%, except for 26 months during the bitter 1981-1982 recession, which slew the historic inflation of the 1970s. That is how inconsistent with the prior history of the American economy President Obama’s extended unemployment has been. That is some fundamental transformation of America. By this point in the Reagan recovery, 61 months after the recession started, jobs had grown 8.7% higher than where they were when the steep 1981-1982 recession started, representing an increase of about 10 million new jobs. By contrast, in January 2013, jobs in the Obama recovery from the 2008-2009 recession were still 2.3% below where they were when the recession started, at least 3 million less, or a shortfall of about 8 million jobs if you count population growth since the recession started. Moreover, in the 11 post-Depression recessions before President Obama, the economy recovered the GDP lost during the recession within an average of 4.5 quarters after the recession’s start. It took Obama’s recovery 16 quarters, or 4 years, to reach that point. Today, 5 years, or 20 quarters, after the recession started, the economy (real GDP) has grown just 2.4% above where it was when the recession started. By sharp contrast, at this point in the Reagan recovery, the economy had boomed by 18.1%, almost one-fifth. news.heartland.org/editorial/2013/04/05/his-greatest-failure-absence-economic-recovery-under-obamas-keynesian-rule-what
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 21:31:03 +0000
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