I might have missed it, but I think the article left out that not only has the population grown by 20 million since 2009, there was a huge job crater right around that time as well, so we’ve been playing “catch-up” ever since. We might have added 14 million jobs in that time, but the net-new job number is far lower (and might be statistically zero) because a lot of the jobs in that 14 million had to cover the losses of 2009.
And I also didn’t see any kind of analysis of the *type* of jobs those 14 million encompass. A lot of those are low-end, even part-time positions, which don’t even come close to generating the kind of economic output that the pre-2009 full-time jobs (mostly tech, but covering many other fields as well) generated.
Lastly, in true Keynes-ian fashion, the job growth was not evenly distributed, both geographically and demographically. I’ve seen several sources that indicated that the vast majority, if not all, of the job growth or job creation (not sure which) took place in Texas, and that the vast majority, if not all, of the new employees are all immigrants.
Good thoughts Little Pig, but I did mention in the article that a very large amount of those jobs were part-time jobs.
But you are absolutely right about the “catch-up” concept. Basically anyone could be president and DO NOTHING and those jobs would’ve replaced themselves, making it look like achievement had happened when what actually happened was a correction that didn’t require any action from a president. Thanks for reading and making a great point.