Liberals Lie About President's "Job Record"

Jaysun ^ | 12/5/03 | Jaysun

[Jaysun]

The left keeps pounding again and again on Bush's "job record". I recently grew tired of hearing it and decided to look at the President's record for myself. I looked at the data and came to the usual conclusion - the left is lying again. The fact of the matter is that their rhetoric has proved to be another brazen lie. We keep hearing comments such as:

"With the economic recovery in full swing, the hiring gains that typically follow have not. The economy lost 2.6 million jobs since Bush took office — 1 percent in the private sector alone. Every president since Hoover has seen the economy add jobs. That puts Bush on track to post the worst jobs record in nearly 70 years. " (By LEIGH STROPE, AP Labor Writer) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031104/ap_on_bi_ge/where_are_the_jobs_1

"First to lose jobs since Hoover"

"Bush losing millions of jobs"

"Clinton added jobs, Bush loses jobs"

"Bush sending jobs overseas."

Nonsense. There are more jobs under President Bush than there ever were under Clinton. Here's a report that's currently shown on the US Department of Labor's website:

(The middle number represents the number of people working, the number on the right represents the gain over the previous year.)

Civilian Labor Force (Number in the Thousands)
1993 129200
1994 131056 1.5%
1995 132304 1.0%
1996 133943 1.2%
1997 136297 1.7%
1998 137673 1.0%
1999 139368 1.3%
2000 142583 1.9%
2001 143734 1.1%
2002 144863 1.2%
2003 (trending even higher)

Look here for more reports:

US Department of Labor
Bureau of Labor Statistics
http://stats.bls.gov/cps/cpsatabs.htm

Please help get the word out.

[Jaysun]

liars.

[KEVLAR]

Evidently, they aren't very good at lying either.

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Do they have that same report or '77-'81?

[Psycho_Bunny]

Your title's too long.

Liberals Lie.

There.  fixed it.

[ex-snook]

Guess the papers reporting those many companies that reduced thousands of jobs is part of the problem, eh? Did you see which companies were hiring in the past few years, for the papers seemed to have missed them? Who has added thousands of jobs in your area?

[Jaysun]

Yes. Go to the following link. You can choose "Employed" for example. Once you've made you're choice/choices and click "Retrieve Data" you'll get your report. At the top of the page you have the option of choosing different years and adding graph data.

http://data.bls.gov/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet

If that doesn't produce what you're looking for let me know.

[wattsup]

Yor title is a little short better yet
"LIBERALS ALWAYS LIE"

[So Cal Rocket]

Unfortunately, you're misinterpreting what the data says. "Civilian Labor Force" is all people who are working, or actively looking for work. This is broken down into two pieces - "employed" and "unemployed".

"Employment" figures for year-end 1993-2003(thru Nov) are:

1993 112203
1994 116056 +3.4%
1995 118210 +1.9%
1996 121003 +2.4%
1997 124361 +2.8%
1998 127364 +2.4%
1999 130509 +2.5%
2000 132445 +1.5%
2001 130661 -1.3%
2002 130198 -0.4%
2003 130174 -0.0%

[lelio]

There are more jobs under President Bush than there ever were under Clinton.

The population of the US grows by about 2.5M people a year. I would hope that there's more jobs in the country under Bush than Clinton.

[dwd1]

Touché

[Jaysun]

Guess the papers reporting those many companies that reduced thousands of jobs is part of the problem, eh? Did you see which companies were hiring in the past few years, for the papers seemed to have missed them? Who has added thousands of jobs in your area?


Yes, I guess so. If you have a problem believing that there have been jobs added you should look in the local classifieds (you can find them at the back of those same "problem causing" newspapers). You could also look at monster.com which literally has millions of jobs available to choose from. If that still doesn't calm any doubts, you can try presenting your question to the Government agency that produced the numbers.

[jimkress]

Liberals Lie

Redundant. If a Liberal's lips are moving they are lying.

[Jaysun]

Unfortunately, you're misinterpreting what the data says. "Civilian Labor Force" is all people who are working, or actively looking for work.


If what you say is true, what is the purpose of the "Persons who currently want a job" report?

(Unadj) Not in Labor Force, Want a Job Now
16 years and over
not in labor force

(Number in thousands)
1994 6218
1995 5670
1996 5451
1997 4941
1998 4812
1999 4568
2000 4413
2001 4590
2002 4677
2003 ?

The "Employment-Population Ratio" report also points to the idea that the Liberals claims are false. I also found another "breakdown" of the report data which - once again - support my claim:

http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm

Where did you get the data that you provided? I'm not unable to admit that I'm mistaken - but all of the information that I've seen supports my claim that the "Bush has lost (whatever) millions of jobs" isn't at all true.

[MosesKnows]

Evidently, they aren't very good at lying either.

How good one must be at lying is more a function of who is being lied to rather than how well the lie is constructed. When a lie reports what the recipent wishes to hear the lie need not be all that creative.

[Dr. Frank fan]

I'm always a tad uncomfortable with discussions of a Presidents "job record", with one side trying to blame the President for "not 'creating' enough jobs" while the other side tries to defend him from this criticism by saying "he has too 'created' lotsa jobs".

Simply put, I don't buy the assumptions behind this criticism/defense. The President of the United States is not the "Economy Czar" or "Job-Creation Ombudsperson" of the United States. "Creating" jobs is not his primary job. Nor is it is secondary or tertiary job.

He doesn't sit in an Economy Control Room at the center of the Earth flipping switches and twisting dials to make "The Economy" good. He can't "create" jobs or "grow" the economy by Focusing Like A Laser On it, nor does a bad economy / slow job growth mean he hasn't Focused enough on the problem. (In the particular case of Bush, the economic situation has been affected primarily by two and only two large factors: (1) dot-com crash, (2) 9/11. Compared to these two factors, whatever Bush has or hasn't done is peanuts.)

Don't get me wrong. All other things being equal I want jobs and the economy to increase under this Presidency or any other; I want milk and honey to flow and people to be fat and happy. And to be sure, the policies pursued by a President *can* affect the economy this way and that, although it's by no means and very seldom an ironclad, conscious, cause-and-effect kind of thing. It's just that "the economy" is not the President's main responsibility. Nowhere in the Constitution will you find "growing the economy" or "creating jobs" listed among his duties. As far as I'm concerned it's well down there on the list.

And basically, if you are voting against a President because (a) you got unemployed under that President, (b) you read some newspaper and it published such-and-such numbers which made you think his "job record" is bad even though you yourself still have a job; or, conversely, if you are voting for a President because (c) you got a job / stayed employed under that President, or (d) although you yourself don't have a job you think his "job record" was good according to whatever numbers were published / spouted by pundits.... then I think you're an irresponsible voter.

Such considerations (neither your private job situation, nor some bogus fuzzy macroeconomic statistics which you heard on TV) should not be the determining factor in whether or not you vote for a President.

In the case of people who were personally unemployed under a President, I can understand the emotions behind "punishing" him by voting against him however. But in the case of people (pundits, talking heads, political junkies...) who endlessly discuss these gross macroeconomic Numbers and Statistics (which nobody really knows with any accuracy), arguing over them and tossing them back and forth, with the bizarre implication that whether the Number is X or Y should affect how I vote, I have to draw the line.

I don't buy the whole thing as a valid issue in the first place.

[Jaysun]

The population of the US grows by about 2.5M people a year. I would hope that there's more jobs in the country under Bush than Clinton.


Of course. Look at the percentage of gains of the previous year in my original post. They don't look to be out of line with Clinton's gains. If you listen to the claims from the left you get the impressions that Bush's numbers would be negative. So, unless there was a massive "breeding frenzy" 16 years before Bush took office, the claims of the left are nonsense. Last week Hillary said that Bush has lost 2.6 million jobs. Where in the hootin-nanny-hell are they coming up with those numbers?

[So Cal Rocket]

http://www.bls.gov/ces/home.htm

Click on the "dinosaur" icon under "change in payroll employment"...

you can then get the raw data from the "more formatting options" link

[Jaysun]

"I don't buy the whole thing as a valid issue in the first place."



I understand your point, and I agree. However, my point is different. I'm simply attempting to show that there is valid and reliable data that exposes the lies in their claim. The point as to whether or not there is a relationship between President and Economy is moot. An issue doesn't have to be valid in order to be exploited via lies by the Democrats.

[Steve_Seattle]

I entirely agree that this business of blaming/praising presidents for "creating jobs" and improving/wrecking the economy has gotten way out of hand. Presidential policies generally only tinker around the margins of these statistics, which are driven by many factors utterly beyond the control of the president. In a dictatorship, a president or dictator (e.g. Mugabe) may indeed ruin an economy largely on his own, but in a modern, complex economy like ours, presidential actions are only a small part of the mix.

[RebelBanker]

I just looked at data going back to 1948.