Anything wrong with this chart?

[SoonerCoug]

My liberal friends are celebrating this chart from the Washington Post. I'm curious what people think of it. Red is under Bush, and blue is under Obama. Is this accurate? If so, it needs to be in every democrat's campaign commercial.

[Viking]

yes, but why don't we start the chart at a realistic period, say the last twenty years, not just during the worst credit crisis in history (which had its roots in an act of complicity by both parties in repealing glass steagall)

[DU Ute]

Is it -700,000 of something good or bad? That such a poorly labeled chart gets your liberal friends excited speaks volumes.

[SoonerCoug]

Is it -700,000 of something good or bad? That such a poorly labeled chart gets your liberal friends excited speaks volumes.

I was always taught in Sunday School that the most important thing is what direction you're headed.

[Babs]

It's a national job growth chart - shows the number of jobs added or lost each month. There's no denying the trend. The question becomes the nature/value of the jobs lost these last thirty months versus the nature/value of the ones finally being added. The spike last November, for example, was probably due to mass hiring of seasonal retail workers.

[New Mexican Disaster]

It's a national job growth chart - shows the number of jobs added or lost each month. There's no denying the trend. The question becomes the nature/value of the jobs lost these last thirty months versus the nature/value of the ones finally being added. The spike last November, for example, was probably due to mass hiring of seasonal retail workers.

Controlling for seasonal adjustment the charts are essentially the same.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2...d_20091207.png

[thesaint258]

I wonder how many of those jobs added in March are Census jobs.

[Surfah]

I wonder how many of those jobs added in March are Census jobs.

I was about to post the same thing. There are two guys in our ward that are both out of work who got Census jobs.

[SoonerCoug]

I wonder how many of those jobs added in March are Census jobs.

60K

[YOhio]

It will be interesting to see how history defines the correlation of the employment figures to the stimulus bill. The recovery.gov site has the total jobs created/saved number as 682K, but their methodology is somewhat suspect. Not necessarily because they're trying to inflate the numbers; it's simply a difficult statistic to quantify. The site does say that the total amount paid in grants/contracts/loans is right now at about $100B, which would allow for a simple method for identifying jobs created/saved. The more difficult figure is in the approximately $300B already paid out for tax benefits and entitlements. The multiplier effect comes into play here and it's nearly impossible to identify an accurate figure from these categories.

[Katy Lied]

The census says they need hundreds of thousands of jobs.

http://2010.census.gov/2010censusjobs/

I wonder how they count up the temp and the part time jobs.

[BoylenOver]

This chart raises a question I've always been curious about: what's the lag time between the President/Congress signing a bill into law, the law taking effect, and being able to see tangible results? Is that an impossible question to answer in a vacuum? Between Dems and GOPers taking credit and/or pointing fingers on everything from oil prices to domestic terrorism, I've always wondered if/when either party has been correct to take the credit.

[Katy Lied]

This chart raises a question I've always been curious about: what's the lag time between the President/Congress signing a bill into law, the law taking effect, and being able to see tangible results? Is that an impossible question to answer in a vacuum? Between Dems and GOPers taking credit and/or pointing fingers on everything from oil prices to domestic terrorism, I've always wondered if/when either party has been correct to take the credit.

I know for the stimulus bill, people started counting the jobs saved/created before they even received stimulus money.

As a side note, I am duly employed indirectly through stimulus money.

[Uncle Ted]

Compare the above chart to this chart at google. VP Biden made a prediction that the economy will be adding between 250,000 and 500,000 jobs a month in the next few months. If the economy can add 500,000 jobs per month for the next five years the unemployment rate will be back to where it was in 2008.

[SoonerCoug]

Compare the above chart to this chart at google. VP Biden made a prediction that the economy will be adding between 250,000 and 500,000 jobs a month in the next few months. If the economy can add 500,000 jobs per month for the next five years the unemployment rate will be back to where it was in 2008.

The unemployment rate is different. The rate is measured by the number of people who are seeking employment. Most experts are arguing that the jump in rate is a good thing in the sense that more available jobs mean that people who were not even trying to get a job are now seeking employment again.