It would seem necessary to compare the change in Employment Level to the change in Labor Force over the four year presidential term make a reasonable judgment on “Job Creation”. No matter how many jobs are created, if it less than the growth of the Labor Force, true unemployment is going up.

The only way for the unemployment figure to go down while the growth in employment is lagging behind the growth in the labor force is to no longer count those who (1) have given up actively seeking employment and/or (2) are no longer on unemployment compensation. On the other hand the only way for growth in employment to exceed the growth in the labor force is for those who were not being counted (not actively seeking employment and/or no longer on unemployment compensation) to move back into the labor force by actually finding employment.

I calculated the change in Employment Level as a percent of the change in the Civilian Labor Force over the four calendar years of each presidential term.

The data can be found on the Bureau of Labor Statistics web site:
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bls
Civilian Labor Force = Report LNS11000000
Employment Level = Report LNS12000000

In descending order:
135.20% _ Kennedy/Johnson
130.71% _ Clinton 1st
128.37% _ Truman
120.09% _ Reagan 2nd
114.34% _ Johnson
113.61% _ Clinton 2nd
094.75% _ Reagan 1st
092.69% _ Carter
079.81% _ Nixon
069.61% _ Nixon/Ford
067.98% _ Eisenhower 1st
059.10% _ Bush 43
053.35% _ Eisenhower 2nd
047.25% _ Bush 41

(Sorry for the leading 0, I couldn't figure out how to otherwise align the decimal points.)

Great job, Arm. It's nice to see these things in one place, changes the perspective. Especially considering that all of the "figure heads" are constantly spouting about the great job growth.

Bush says job growth is up 3% and growing strong.

Perspective.




how much is 3% of almost nothing?