Good Luck Getting a Job in Obama's Economy

Recently I compared the median household income during my father’s presidency with that of the Obama economy. The absolute numbers were just about the same: $51,681 under Reagan to $51,017 under Obama. But when you factor in the effect of inflation, households under Obama have taken a huge pay cut.

A family today would have to make $94,234 just to equal the buying power in 1989. But at least the families struggling by on Obama’s median are working. When you look at job creation during his term compared to past presidents, Obama is revealed as the faculty lounge dilettante we all warned you about.

Members of the Obama administration and various cheerleading sections have been using statistics to lie to the American people. They claim Obama has created vastly more jobs than President Bush (43). They do this by only counting the jobs in months when there was a net gain in jobs created. They ignore the many months when there was a net loss in American jobs.

This is like only rating an NFL quarterback on the passes he completes and ignoring the drops, interceptions, and incompletions. Using that benchmark Tim Tebow would be all-pro, and so would every other QB in the league.

Mike Patton at Forbes.com has run an analysis of net new jobs created during an administration. His research begins with FDR and ends with Obama. Using this scale Obama has created only 17 percent of the jobs created under the dreaded Bush administration and he ranks dead last among all presidents.

Since Obama has completed a little more than half of his two terms in office, a more accurate measure would be net jobs created per month. By that measure Obama is still dead last with 4,311 new jobs per month compared to Bush’s 11,458.

Obama has progressed from “you didn’t build that” to “it’s impossible to build that” under his economic policies.

Bloomberg.net had an interesting story on women’s employment, claimed as a bright spot under Obama. Unemployment figures for females 20 and over was 6.3 percent — coincidentally the lowest since Bush 43 in December 2008 — while men had a 7.1 percent unemployment rate.

The catch, and there’s always a catch with leftists, is the employment gains are in waiting tables, cooking, housekeeping and in-home healthcare. Hardly the jobs Democrat feminists promised as they danced around the burning bra bonfires.

Reporters Katz and Tanzi also relate the perfect anecdote that describes how Obama administration thinkers relate to the real world. Victoria Honard, a May graduate of Syracuse University, has a degree that gives her expertise in education, health, and human services. She moved to Washington, D.C., hoping to find work in a policy shop. She found part-time work waiting tables at the Hamilton.

Last summer she served one of Obama’s cabinet members, who the reporters don’t name. Honard had the privilege of recommending a glass of “New Zealand sauvignon blanc.”

And that was all the input from the little people the cabinet member wanted.