Former president Bill Clinton, speaking during the third night of the Democratic convention on Wednesday, presented a bit of data meant to promote his party \u2014 and, indirectly, his period in office.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to have a hard time believing this, but so help me, I triple-checked it,\u201d Clinton began. \u201cSince the end of the Cold War in 1989, America has created about 51 million new jobs. I swear I checked this three times. Even I couldn\u2019t believe it. What\u2019s the score? Democrats 50, Republicans one.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is: 50 million jobs added under Democratic presidents and 1 million under Republicans.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne,\u201d Clinton continued. After referring to vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz\u2019s past job as a high school football coach, Clinton spiked the ball. \u201cBut even the most limited of us in what we know about football, or any other sport, knows that if you\u2019ve got 50 and the other side\u2019s got one, you\u2019re ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is one measure, obviously selected for effect. But Clinton\u2019s not wrong.<\/p>\n
There have been six presidents since 1989, three from each party. Under the three Democrats \u2014 Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden \u2014 there was a cumulative increase of 50 million more people working between the starts of their terms and the ends. Under the three Republicans \u2014 George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump \u2014 the cumulative total was, in fact, only 1 million. (That\u2019s starting at the beginning of the elder Bush\u2019s term, not the fall of the Berlin Wall a few months later that marked the start of the Cold War\u2019s demise.)<\/p>\n
There is an avalanche of caveats that apply here, certainly. One is that \u201cincrease in people working\u201d is not fully equivalent to \u201cjobs created,\u201d nor is it necessarily a measure of the policies or administration of the presidents.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also the case that both George W. Bush and Trump saw calamities during their presidencies that significantly reduced employment: the recession under Bush and the coronavirus pandemic under Trump. But you can also see how this brings us back to the uncertainties just mentioned. Could the job loss during those events have been more limited under different presidents?<\/p>\n
If we extend the point backward a bit further, to the end of World War II, the difference is still striking. Each party has had seven presidents since that time, with 88 million jobs added under Democrats and 32 million under Republicans.<\/p>\n
Take out the post-Cold War period and you see that the distinction is more modest: 38 million under Democrats to 31 under Republicans. There is, however, still a distinction.<\/p>\n
Of course, these presidents also had different durations in office. John F. Kennedy wasn\u2019t in office as long as his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower. So it would make sense if the country added fewer jobs during his administration. (As it turns out, it didn\u2019t, but you get the point.)<\/p>\n
If we adjust employment increases by months in office, we still see a difference \u2014 particularly since George H.W. Bush in 1989.<\/p>\n
Again, more caveats can be sprinkled over all of this. Job growth under Biden was increased to some extent because employers were getting back up to speed after layoffs at the outset of the pandemic, for example.<\/p>\n
So what happens if we take just the middle two years of Trump\u2019s and Biden\u2019s terms and compare them? That eliminates the covid effects for Trump and the boost at the outset for Biden. It also gives a year during which their policies could be expected to have had an effect.<\/p>\n
In 2018 and 2019, under Trump, the country added 4.3 million jobs. In 2022 and 2023, under Biden, it added 7.5 million jobs.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to be a sports whiz to see that seven puts you ahead of four, either.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Bill Clinton, speaking during the third night of the Democratic convention on Wednesday,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}