I was curious as to just how far from being the first job killing president W is, and how many jobs need to be demolished over the next few weeks for him to achieve this incredible milestone.
We all know job creation through the latest expansion was anemic. But I was amazed at how bad it was when I took a look at the numbers.
There were 132,469,000 non-farm jobs in the US in January of 2001. That number declined to 129,839,000 in June of 2003, when the job killing of the first Bush recession ended and the economy started creating jobs again. By January of 2005, jobs had recovered to their January 2001 level. Jobs peaked in December of 2007, at 138,078,000. Since then, the decline has been accelerating, with preliminary job count in November 2008 at 136,067,000 jobs left in the US. This number is now decreasing daily.
A few simple statistics from the BLS based on those numbers:
Total jobs created since Bush took office: 3,698,000
Jobs created per month in the 94 months since Bush took office: 39,340
Jobs needed per month to stabilize employment rate: 76,000
Jobs needed to stabilize employment is based on the number of individuals in the civilian labor force (noninstitutionalized residents age 16 and over). The civilian labor force grew from 143,800,000 when Bush took office, to 154,616,000 in November of this year. About 66 percent of the labor force is working. Since the economy added 10,816,000 members of the labor force over that period, or about 115,000 laborers per month, it would require 0.66 x 115,000 jobs, or 75,900 new jobs per month to maintain a stable employment rate. Obviously, over the last eight years, the Bush economy fell far short of that.
Another way to look at it - the Bush economy has generated 51.8 percent of the necessary number of jobs to break even over his tenure.
To answer my original question, the economy will need to destroy 3,698,000 jobs to reach break-even. Between October and November, 533,000 jobs were lost, at current pace, in 6.9 months we would reach break-even.
Yet another example of the worst president ever.