Cumulative NFP Job Creation in First Four Years, by President

Just sayin’

Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment relative to first month of administration, in logs, for Biden (blue), for Trump (orange), for Obama (green), for GW Bush (red), and for Clinton (chartreuse). Source: BLS, and author’s calculations.

30 thoughts on “Cumulative NFP Job Creation in First Four Years, by President

  1. Moses Herzog

    I know this isn’t like snapping your fingers, but Powell has been Fed Chair 5 years, nearly to the exact day today. Could you do a “first 4 years” comparison for NFP for the last 5 Fed Chairs, in logs?? I know you want to get your shotgun out every time I ask you to be my RA, but you know this lazy bones bum can’t resist asking.

  2. pgl

    Just sayin indeed. I heard Biden said that yesterday. And the added bonus – it is a factual statement.

    1. Moses Herzog

      President Biden’s octogenarian mind is quicker than people have it pegged. When Republican legislators booed him for confronting them with the fact Republicans continually and perennially keep trying to kill off Medicare and Social Security, Biden immediately quipped “I’m glad to see — no, I tell you, I enjoy conversion,” I about died laughing for 20 seconds solid on that one.

  3. Econned

    Menzie Chinn,
    What are you sayin’?
    That you can extract data and segment it in a particular fashion?
    Or is this a counter Blinder & Watson (2016) whose “empirical analysis does not attribute any of the partisan growth gap to fiscal or monetary policy”? Are you expanding the literature to look more closely at the partisan gap in employment growth? Please share a link to your working paper!!! Can’t wait.

    1. Moses Herzog

      I didn’t know you had taken up scat singing in the Metaverse Econned. Wow!!!! What a man of varying interests you are. Let us know how it goes.

  4. JohnH

    Moral of the story: it doesn’t pay to take office just before a recession. It’s a lot better to office in the midst of a recession or early in a recovery.

  5. James

    Thanks! Calculated Risk does a similar chart going back to Reagan – (who mainly increased defense spending and blew up U.S. budget to get job growth-IMO) – Glancing at these charts – Why does the “Republicans are good for the economy” myth persist in media narratives? https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2021/07/by-request-public-and-private-sector.html
    To me – Republicans are extremists who want to blow up U.S. credit rating to cut SNAP benefits – because getting $180/month for food is not restrictive enough when you are living under a $2000 a month asset limit. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-agriculture/2023/02/06/federal-food-aid-in-gops-debt-limit-crosshairs-00081266
    Also _ I assume these GOP dingbats know that SNAP mainly goes to rural red areas and have an economic multiplier effect on local economies – https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/93529/err265_summary.pdf

    1. pgl

      ‘A top House Republican confirms they’re considering new work requirements or general cuts to federal food assistance in the brewing debt limit fight.’

      It is like they want children to starve to death if their parents are not ultra-rich. More tax cuts for the elites!

  6. Bruce Hall

    Imagine, if you will, a prosperous country where nearly everyone who wants to work can find work and does work. Then imagine that country suddenly confronted by leaders who tell the people that not only can they not work, but they must remain home and the businesses at which they work must be closed. Finally, imagine that country where the leaders relent and allow the people and businesses to resume, gradually, normal activities.

    No, we are not imagining China. We are imagining a country where people were previously free to make their own decisions about their lives, their work, and their safety, but were then told they must relinquish those freedoms in order to make everyone safe. Then they were told they could partially resume enjoying those freedoms as long as they consented to do exactly as their leaders told them to do. Then imagine how this whole episode affected that country’s economy and employment.

    Has that country recovered fully? Has employment returned to its “potential employment” level in the same way that “potential GDP” is projected? Are two million less people now participating in that work force than would have been if the country had not been disrupted by both a threat and the response of the leaders? Has that country seen jobs created at a record pace since the restraints were removed or have we witnessed an incomplete recovery to the level we would have witnessed if the jobs had not been artificially removed?

    It is as if there was a lake that is fed by a river and suddenly the flow of water from the river is diverted. The lake level drops significantly. Then the diversion is gradually removed and the lake levels begin to return to normal levels. When the lake levels are almost back to normal, there is great celebration and boasting that the lake level has risen faster than ever before. Everyone forgets why the lake level had dropped so precipitously.

    1. Moses Herzog

      @ Bruce Hall
      Did you want to share with the class, which Michigan leader or member of the Michigan state police stopped you from either leaving your home or from job hunting between January 18, 2020, to February 8th, 2023?? I’d like the full personal name of the Michigan political leader who commanded you not to leave your home, and the badge number of the Michigan policeman or badge number of any FBI agent who held a gun to your head Bruce, and told you to stay home.

      Be specific please Bruce~~or STFU. Thanks for playing America’s favorite game show “Deliberately Dumb While Wearing a Red MAGA Dunce Cap”. The laughs have been precious.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/michigan-restaurants-covid-restrictions/2021/01/30/e97b53ba-5b49-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/24/michigan-gretchen-whitmer-social-distance/

      1. pgl

        Well – Brucie is sort of upset that Dr. Chinn’s next post on debt/GDP just implicitly called out another thread of Brucie’s mendacity.

      2. Bruce Hall

        Good try, Moses, but… nah.

        Anyone who was awake in 2020 could see the impact of the shutdowns. Sure, not everyone lost their jobs and not every business shut down, but there were plenty.

        CES employment peaked in June 2000 for Michigan at 4,694,100. Since then 310,000 jobs have been lost in Michigan according to the employer survey. From a trough of 3,399,400 in April 2020, Michigan has gained 984,700 jobs according to CES employment figures.

        CPS employment in Michigan reached a maximum of 4,993,328 in March 2000. 348,443 jobs have been lost in Michigan since then according to the household survey. From a April 2020 low of 3,524,836, Michigan has added 1,120,049 jobs according to the CPS survey.

        Also…
        https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MIUR

        Also…
        https://www.clickondetroit.com/health/2020/03/24/michigan-coronavirus-timeline-key-dates-covid-19-case-tracking-state-orders/

        Now go play with your toys. I’ll try not to disturb you with facts.

        1. pgl

          Brucie, Brucie, Brucie – I guess when Trump told us that this deadly virus would wash away by Easter 2020 – you believed him. Oh wait – you hid in your basement for over 2 years letting your mommy risk her life shopping for your groceries.

        2. pgl

          Unemployment Rate in Michigan

          7% when Trump finally left office. 4.3% now. Gee Brucie – thanks for reminding us how Biden has had to clean up Trump’s incompetence.

        3. pgl

          Brucie boy seems to be quoting something but once again Brucie cannot be bothered to tell us what his source is. Given his track record of being caught blatantly lying, one would think Brucie would provide a source or link. After all – it took me two seconds to find this FRED series:

          https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMPLOYMI

          BTW – employment did fall in Michigan under Trump and then rebounded under Biden. But I guess I am being mean by providing the facts to Brucie along with an actual source. Sorry about that Brucie boy.

          1. Moses Herzog

            @ pgl
            In Bruce’s MAGA world, during a severe thunderstorm it’s not the lightning bolts people should be afraid of, it’s those damned umbrellas. And if it wasn’t for the weatherman, people would have just been willing to go out and get sopping wet and get pneumonia soon after, but the meteorologist had to tell people to bring their umbrellas and ruined everything.

            These MAGA Republicans are the ones now lecturing America on the difference between “normal” and “crazy”. I guess Oink Oink Sanders and Bruce Hall wanted President Biden to tell Americans to drink some bleach?? Was that “normal” in her tiny brain?? Only Bruce could tell us.

      3. pgl

        We may have found a member of Congress even dumber than Brucie boy – Lauren Boebert:

        https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-explodes-over-lauren-boeberts-012932674.html

        Raise your hand if you’re old enough to remember who was president in 2020, when schools were closed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) was torn apart on Twitter after she seemed to forget that detail in a tweet about President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. “Hey Joe, YOU CLOSED THEM!” she tweeted, citing a line from Biden’s speech in which he said: “In the midst of the COVID crisis, when schools were closed and we were shutting down everything, let’s recognize how far we came in the fight against the pandemic itself.”

    2. pgl

      Aww Brucie is so upset more Michigan Democrats did not die from COVID19. Oh well Brucie – Biden has a plan to keep the price of your bleach treatments affordable.

    3. pgl

      Has that country recovered fully? Has employment returned to its “potential employment” level in the same way that “potential GDP” is projected?

      I see you never read the recent Kevin Drum post on how US real GDP has fared relative to other nations. Oh wait – you don’t read – period. Never mind.

      1. Bruce Hall

        Not really interested in how the US fared vs. other nations. Only salient point is that the US “fast jobs growth in history” is simply allowing people to go back to work and we are still below where we would have been if the economy wasn’t shut down. That supply chain blockage was a direct result of well-intentioned, but faulty policies driven by the CDC.
        https://health.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2022-02-02/a-johns-hopkins-study-says-ill-founded-lockdowns-did-little-to-limit-covid-deaths

        But if you want to believe that “shutdown the pipeline on the first day” Biden is a “job creator”, go ahead and believe that. He’s just another DC obstructionist.

        1. pgl

          “Not really interested in how the US fared vs. other nations.”

          We if you were ever interested in the truth – Kelly Anne Conway would fire you. So hey. But come on Brucie – have you not figured out by now why the employment to population remains below where it was 3 years ago even as the unemployment rate is incredibly low? Simple arithmetic (which we all get is over your head) notes it is the fact that the labor force participation rate has not fully gotten back to 2/2020 levels.

          And of course the reason people are still reluctant to get back to the office as people like you. After all – you dismissed the need for masks, the need for testing and tracing, the need for vaccinations. So you can complain all you want – it is MAGA hat wearing moronical liars that you that are at fault.

        2. pgl

          The study, titled “A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality,” said lockdowns in Europe and the U.S. reduced COVID-19 deaths by 0.2 percent.

          This is the study Bruce Hall tried to foist on us as the definitive analysis but once again Bruce Hall is being less than honest:

          https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/02/03/johns-hopkins-study-on-lockdowns/

          Here’s What We Know About ‘Johns Hopkins Study’ on Lockdowns
          It’s a non-peer reviewed working paper that has not been endorsed by the university.
          This work was conducted by three economists, not epidemiologists: Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung, and Steve H. Hanke. It’s worth noting that Hanke, a senior fellow at the CATO Institute, was at the center of a brief controversy in June 2020 after he erroneously claimed that Vietnam had not reported any COVID-19 data. An open letter from 285 “public health researchers and professionals and concerned citizens” to Johns Hopkins University demanded an apology from Hanke and claimed that his tweet was “more politically driven than evidence based.” Hanke later deleted the tweet.

          There are a lot of people here that think CoRev is the most dishonest troll ever. No way – Bruce Hall lies much more than CoRev could ever imagine. Of course these two trolls should be aware by now that we check up on these things because we know what pathetic lying trolls they really are.

        3. pgl

          Samir Bhatt, professor of statistics and public health, Imperial College London, said:

          “I find this paper has flaws and needs to be interpreted very carefully … The most inconsistent aspect is the reinterpreting of what a lockdown is. The authors define lockdown as “as the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention”. This would make a mask wearing policy a lockdown. For a meta-analysis using a definition that is at odds with the dictionary definition (a state of isolation or restricted access instituted as a security measure) is strange.

          Professor Neil Ferguson, director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Jameel Institute, Imperial College London, also found this definition of a lockdown problematic:

          This report on the effect of “lockdowns” does not significantly advance our understanding of the relative effectiveness of the plethora of public health measures adopted by different countries to limit COVID-19 transmission. The policies which comprised “lockdown” varied dramatically between countries, meaning defining the term is problematic. In their new report, Herby et al appear to define lockdown as imposition of one or more mandatory non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs); by that definition, the UK has been in permanent lockdown since 16th of March 2021, and remains in lockdown – given it remain compulsory for people with diagnosed COVID-19 to self-isolate for at least 5 days.

          I mean can these authors be more dishonest? Oh wait – Bruce Hall certainly can!

  7. baffling

    from a slope perspective, looks like obama, bush and trump were nearly identical. clinton was good. biden was great. maybe we could learn something from how clinton and biden govern? seems to me the republican presidents really underperform, when you consider that obama had to deal with the financial crisis created under the bush administration. biden has the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. republicans continue to look like fools as they try to argue biden has been bad for the economy. the public thinks they are fools.

    1. pgl

      Obama had to clean up Bush43’s mess from the Great Recession. Biden had to clean up Trump’s 2020 disaster.

  8. pgl

    Obama inherited that Bush43 disaster. Biden inheritied that Trump disaster. Now Reagan argues he inherited the Carter disaster but the economy grew by 4.2% from 1980II to 1981QII and Reagan created his own disaster.

  9. Moses Herzog

    Public Service Announcement:
    “Medicare Advantage” is NOT Medicare. It is a scam intended to make HMOs and insurers rich off of Seniors’ life savings. Thanks for your time.

    1. pgl

      I get calls from them way too often. No – I have not fallen for their nonsense the calls are getting annoying.

    2. Ivan

      One of those scammers punch lines is that “if you are not happy you “can always switch back to traditional Medicare” if you are not satisfied. What they forget to tell the victims is that when you do that switch back (because you got sick and realize that the so-called “Advantage” is not for the patients), then the premiums for traditional Medicare will be much higher. The other thing they don’t say is that for those who are still working and have health insurance the signup with them is a complete waste of money – its all “you turned 65 and must sign up now or it will be much more expensive”

Comments are closed.