Job Creation: Bush vs. Obama

Job Creation: Bush vs. Obama

October 12, 2010 2:41 P.M.

By Veronique de Rugy  

According to Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, President Obama is on pace to create more jobs in 2010 than President Bush did in his eight years of office.

"On the pace that we're on with job creation in the last four months — if we continue on that pace — all the leading economists say it is likely that we will — we will have created more jobs in this year than in the entire Bush Presidency," Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Weston, said on FOX News.

Let's look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

During the Bush presidency, net total employment went up by 1.08 million jobs. So far, during the Obama presidency, total employment has been reduced by 3.3 million jobs.

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.

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.

Now, we can't really compare these numbers, because we have eight years of Bush data and only two years of Obama data. That's why the chart below looks at the average monthly job creation under each president. There were more jobs created monthly under President Bush than under President Obama. Overall, most of the net jobs created under Bush were created in the government; many private sector jobs have been destroyed under Obama; and the number of government jobs has decreased, even though federal employment has grown.

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