In his State of the Union speech, President Obama stated, “After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over six million new jobs.”
The jobs data produced by BLS tells at least four accurate, but different stories about the state of U.S. private sector employment.
1. The trough of the recession occurred in February 2010. About 6,111,000 private sector jobs were added between February 2010 and January 2013.
2. When President Obama took office in January 2009, private sector employment was 111,048,000. In January 2013, it was only 113,111,000. During the first four years of President Obama’s presidency, private sector employment increased by about 2 million workers.
3. In December of 2000 private sector employment peaked at 111,776,000. The recovery from the 2001 recession took 54 months, or until June 2005, to return to its 2000 peak. The rebound continued until January 2008 when private sector employment peaked at 115,668,000. Just over 8.8 million jobs were lost between then and February 2010 when private sector employment bottomed out at 106,850,000, well below the peak in 2000. Specifically, in January 2009, employment dropped below the 2000 peak. Forty three months later, mid-2012, the number of jobs again exceeded the 2000 peak. At the time President Obama gave his 2013 State of the Union speech private sector employment was only about 1.2 million jobs greater than the peak in 2000.
4. Private sector employment will not reach 2008 peak employment until mid-2014. In other words it will take about 72 months, or 6 six years for full recovery of the private sector from the 2008 recession.
The wisdom of Darrell Huff, author of How to Lie with Statistics, should be heeded when reviewing data produced by political leaders, economists, and business leaders. Statistics can tell many stories.
©Copyright 2011 by CBER.