So where are the jobs and why are they missing?

On Thursday night, Speaker of the House (thanksfully soon to be emeritus) Nancy Pelosi gave a speech on the floor in which she said that from day one of his administration, Barack Obama had been a "job creator". That led me to look at the actual facts and to find some rather startling truths.

Since World War 2, there have been eleven recessions. More jobs were lost in both absolute numbers and in percentage terms in the current recession than in any other. Over two thirds of all the job losses came while obama was president. Nevertheless,many people would tell you that the cause of the recession was not something that could be blamed on Obama, and I agree with that. The current recession began before Obama even took office. On the other hand, Obama is responsible for how the US dealt with the recession. In others words, the way into the recession is not Obama's responsibility, but the way out of the recession is all his. And the picture is not good.

First of all, the current recovery has been unusally slow and weak. In each of the other ten recessions of the last 65 years, jobs have come back much more quickly. The point of greatest job loss in this recession came in December of 2009; it has been a year since then. In nine of the other post war recessions, by one year after the date of greatest job losses, all the losses had been regained and additional new jobs created. In two of the eleven other recessions, at one year after the date of greatest job losses more than half of the total losses had been made up through cration of new jobs. In the current Obama recession, after the passage of one year from the month of greatest total job losses, the economy has only recovered enough to regain less than 10% of the jobs that were lost. If the economy continues to creat jobs at the same rate as it has so far in the recovery, it will take almost eight years just to get back the jobs that were lost.

Second, the remedies used by the government to get the economy growing again have been very different in the current recession than in the other ones since world War 2. Obama's biggest move towards creating jobs was the Stimulus bill, a massive spending push by the federal government that was focused mainly on shoveling funds to states and infrastructure projects. This government spending remedy had not been used in a major way since the Depression. At least four of the other eleven post war recessions were attacked successfully through the use of tax cuts. The remainder were mostly dealt with by letting the economy regain its balance and then move on without assistance.

So, with Obama's unique method of dealing with job losses, the US economy has fared much worse than it did in prior recessions when tax cuts or benign neglect were the method of attack. Obama is directly responsible for the manner of dealing with the recession; he cannot blame this on George Bush. And the only possible conclusion is that Obama has failed as a job creator. In other words, Nancy Pelosi is just wrong in her claims. Obama is not a job creator.