Trump Jobs, Obama Jobs

Everybody's gushing about the great new jobs report that was just released.  223,000 jobs created (preliminary) in May, a strong showing. President Trump actually tweeted about it in advance, which is a definite no-no. Another norm bites the dust.

The unemployment rate fell to 3.8%, the lowest level since the year 2000. Trump recently took credit for that, too.

Trump, apparently, has been a job-creating maven, just like he said he would be. With 16 complete months in office, we now have a solid chunk of jobs data with which to compare with his predecessor. And we should: During the campaign, Trump was highly critical of Obama's job creation record.

So I wanted to see how Trump's 16 full months—February 2017 through May 2018—stack up against a comparable interval under Obama. But which interval would yield a fair comparison? Then it hit me: compare all of them! So I calculated the total jobs created for every single interval of 16 consecutive months during Obama's final 60 months (5 years) in office. Yes I did!

There are 45 such intervals in Obama's final 60 months. I did not go back further because five years is plenty of data; because the period begins far before the presidential campaign in which Trump made his critiques and promises; and because doing so would dip too much into the aftermath of the Great Recession that began at the end of the Bush presidency. Recall that the economy was shedding 800,000 jobs per month when Obama was sworn in. Even so, note that there were 3 million jobs created between the final month of negative job creation and the period we're looking at. But those particular jobs are not part of this study, which, again, is Obama's final 60 months in office. For this analysis we are considering the period February 2012 through January 2017.

The comparison is stark. Obama has two intervals at or above 4 million jobs created (ok, one is 3.999 million). Obama has 19 intervals exceeding 3.5 million. Trump never even hits 3 million.  The total for Trump's first full 16 months is 2.966 million.

In all, there were 40 16-month intervals over Obama's final five years that exceeded 3 million jobs created. There were only five intervals where Obama under-performed Trump. I placed all the data in a table for you to peruse, but because it is so large I put it down at the bottom of this post. Scan it on your way out.

The data comes from the authoritative Bureau of Labor Statistics, from which the monthly jobs reports originate. Here's the source data I worked from; feel free to check my arithmetic. Click on the table for a larger view:

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

This particular table is an image from a screenshot from the linked BLS page, so you can't load the numbers directly into your spreadsheet from here. (Me? I used a calculator. Yes I did!) But you can follow the link in the caption directly to the BLS web site where this table lives, where a download link is provided. Note that you can always obtain the most recent 10 years of data at this BLS page, so it's worth bookmarking.

There's yet another way to compare Trump job creation with Obama job creation. Over Trump's first full 16 months in office, an average of 185,000 jobs were created per month. By contrast, an average of 207,000 jobs were created per month for the entire final 60 months of the Obama presidency.  And over Obama's final 16 months, which abuts Trump's 16 months, an average of 216,000 jobs were created. So the handoff from Obama to Trump saw an immediate large reduction in jobs created. Yes it did!

All the same caveats and disclaimers from my earlier two posts (here and here) on this subject still apply. But we are now playing by Trump's rules, so when Trump crows about how many jobs he's created, citizens need to know he is under-performing Obama. In particular, do not forget how critical Trump was of Obama's economy—including job creation—during the campaign. And don't forget how Trump promised he'd fix that situation as president. Now he wants you to know what a great job he's doing.

Finally, about that unemployment rate, which is at an 18-year low. Trump wants to take credit for that too. Here's a graph of the rate since 2008. Click on the graph for a larger view. As you can see, it has been declining quite steadily for many years since its Great Recession peak, and has continued to decline at about the same rate since Trump took office. See any Trump effect? Me neither.

Source: St. Louis Fed

Up to this moment there have been 92 months of continuous job creation, the vast majority of that under Obama, who also created jobs at a faster rate than Trump. Obama created over 12 million jobs over the 60-month period we've been examining. He created over 15 million jobs since the last monthly job loss, in 2010. Yes he did! So Trump is in effect the cherry on the icing on Obama's jobs cake, but Trump wants to claim he's the entire cake.

At best, Trump hasn't yet managed to screw up Obama's economy. But with his recently announced tariffs and brewing trade wars, he might be trying to do so. We will, as he might put it, have to wait and see.

 Trump jobs, 16 full months in office

Interval	Jobs Created	Avg. Jobs per month
Feb 2017 - May 2018	2,966,000	185,375

Obama jobs, final 60 months, 16-month intervals

Interval	Jobs Created	Avg. Jobs per month
Oct 2015 - Jan 2017	3,452,000	215,750
Sep 2015 - Dec 2016	3,281,000	205,063
Aug 2015 - Nov 2016	3,264,000	204,000
Jul 2015 - Oct 2016	3,349,000	209,313
Jun 2015 - Sep 2016	3,400,000	212,500
May 2015 - Aug 2016	3,462,000	216,375
Apr 2015 - Jul 2016	3,569,000	223,063
Mar 2015 - Jun 2016	3,322,000	207,625
Feb 2015 - May 2016	3,304,000	206,500
Jan 2015 - Apr 2016	3,481,000	217,563
Dec 2014 - Mar 2016	3,558,000	222,375
Nov 2014 - Feb 2016	3,630,000	226,875
Oct 2014 - Jan 2016	3,628,000	226,750
Sep 2014 - Dec 2015	3,809,000	238,063
Aug 2014 - Nov 2015	3,801,000	237,563
Jul 2014 - Oct 2015	3,733,000	233,313
Jun 2014 - Sep 2015	3,688,000	230,500
May 2014 - Aug 2015	3,852,000	240,750
Apr 2014 - Jul 2015	3,999,000	249,938
Mar 2014 - Jun 2015	4,004,000	250,250
Feb 2014 - May 2015	3,995,000	249,688
Jan 2014 - Apr 2015	3,843,000	240,188
Dec 2013 - Mar 2015	3,654,000	228,375
Nov 2013 - Feb 2015	3,797,000	237,313
Oct 2013 - Jan 2015	3,740,000	233,750
Sep 2013 - Dec 2014	3,730,000	233,125
Aug 2013 - Nov 2014	3,739,000	233,688
Jul 2013 - Oct 2014	3,543,000	221,438
Jun 2013 - Sep 2014	3,446,000	215,375
May 2013 - Aug 2014	3,402,000	212,625
Apr 2013 - Jul 2014	3,355,000	209,688
Mar 2013 - Jun 2014	3,315,000	207,188
Feb 2013 - May 2014	3,274,000	204,625
Jan 2013 - Apr 2014	3,229,000	201,813
Dec 2012 - Mar 2014	3,161,000	197,563
Nov 2012 - Feb 2014	3,030,000	189,375
Oct 2012 - Jan 2014	3,001,000	187,563
Sep 2012 - Dec 2013	3,021,000	188,813
Aug 2012 - Nov 2013	3,101,000	193,813
Jul 2012 - Oct 2013	3,036,00	189,750
Jun 2012 - Sep 2013	2,894,000	180,875
May 2012 - Aug 2013	2,810,000	175,625
Apr 2012 - Jul 2013	2,622,000	163,875
Mar 2012 - Jun 2013	2,775,000	173,438
Feb 2012 - May 2013	2,850,000	178,125

Copyright (C) 2018 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

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