From that chart, unemployment did start to spike while Bush was still in office, but then it skyrocketed in a near vertical line when Obama was in office. Problem is, I don’t know what the two percentages on either side of the chart represent. There’s always a legend, or the explanation is always on the side of the chart.
Blue line is the unemployment rate and uses the left hand side (LHS) scale. The Labor Force Participation Rate is the red line and uses the right hand side (RHS) scale.
Yes, things went south before Bush left office... we knew that. What’s interesting is the slope of the lines for the “recovery.” Nearly all of the “improvement” in unemployment can be correlated with the decline in labor force participation.