November 8, 2022

By Steve Corrick

Democrats Grow Jobs; Republicans Grow Oligarchs

It would be great if all the Republican rhetoric about helping job growth was true, but Republican Administrations have lost over 3/4s of a million jobs in their 12 years of governance in the 21st Century.

Unfortunately, while they claim great job production acumen (basically that the market, left alone, creates the most jobs), job growth is far, far worse under Republicans. Here is the list of Republican Job Production failures:

REPUBLICANS ARE NET NEGATIVE ON JOBS FOR THIS MILLENIUM!

Since 2000, Republican Administrations have overseen the loss of over 788,000 jobs. George Bush only gained 2,130,000 during his Administration—(and then, of course, dumped a 5,051,000-job loss on Obama during his first year in office).

Trump ended up losing 9.292,000 jobs in his last year in office, and netted a loss of 2,292,000 jobs over his four years in office. So, combined, even without the Obama job loss thrown in, Republican Administrations lost 788,000 jobs in 12 years in office.

SINCE 2000, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTS HAVE GROWN OVER 23.3 MILLION JOBS!

Joe Biden has overseen the growth of over 10.8 million jobs since the Beginning of 2021—the best total two-year job growth in US history. Obama, even after having to deal with the Bush Crash, and losing over 5 million jobs in his first year, did a remarkable job of turning the US job market around and ended up netting an increase of over 10.57 million Jobs during his term in office. To top off 21st Century job growth, Bill Clinton saw over 1.9 million new jobs created in his last year in office. Combined, the three Democratic Presidents who occupied the presidency since the since the turn of the millenium, have produced over 23.3 million jobs.
Here, (in my admittedly, very bad, Google translation) is the same information in Spanish:

Siglo 21 creación de empleo. Demócratas más 23,3 milliones de empleos en 10,83 años. Trump/Bush perdió 778 mil de empleos en 12 años.

A Century of Democratic Job Creation/Republican Job Destruction:

Below, in a single chart is the net job growth over all Democratic Administrations and all Republican Administrations:
In 49.83 years of Democratic rule, Democrats grew 95,068,000 jobs.
Republicans, in 52 years of occupying the White House only produce 33,240,000 jobs—a stunning job production differential of 61,868,000 more jobs produced under Democrats!

 Random Job Creation? Hardly!

Shown below is an expanded version of Yearly Job Growth Percentage by Administration over the past 101 Years—since the beginning of the Harding Administration.

Note that the best average job growth (under Richard Nixon—2.02% per year) would place sixth behind the Average Percentage Job Growth created under five different Democratic Administrations.

Here are the best yearly job growth percentages by Administration:

The combined Roosevelt/Truman Administrations averaged 4.76% job growth over a twenty-year period!
Biden’s average job growth of 4.14% ranks second.
Kennedy/Johnson produced 3.65% average job growth.
Jimmy Carter produced 3.26%, and 
Bill Clinton averaged 2.65%.

Overall, Democratic Administrations averaged 3.49% Average Annual Job Growth Republican Administrations averaged just 0.95% per year. 

Again, even for over 100 years with a 300% advantage for Democratic job creation, some will claim it is all random. Obviously, it is not, but, if even it were random, would you want to place your bets for job success on the Democratic team that wins three out of four games or the Republican one that loses three out of every four?

It’s also hard to compare job creation in the 1920s and 1930s, since we now have about 6 times as many jobs as we had in 1930, so the percentage of yearly job creation per administration is probably a better comparison…and in the chart at the beginning of this story you can see that Democratic Administrations do far, far better on average for yearly job creation than Republican ones.
Comparison of Average Annual Percentage of Job Creation
By All Republican and Democratic Administrations.

Roosevelt/Truman, in 20 years, averaged 4.76% annual job growth.

Joe Biden, in 1.83 years, has averaged 4.14%annual job growth.

John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, in 8 years, has averaged 3.65% annual job growth.

Jimmy Carter, in 4 years, has averaged 3.26% annual job growth.

Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, in 8 years, averaged 2.02% annual job growth.

Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr., in 12 years, averaged 1.70% annual job growth.

Barack Obama, in 4 years, averaged 3.26% annual job growth.

Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, in 12 years, averaged 0.36% annual job growth.

George W. Bush, in 8 years, averaged 0.20% annual job growth.

In last place, Donald Trump, in 4 years, averaged negative  0.50% annual job growth.
6. Some on the right say, “But Trump lost all those jobs because of a pandemic!” Other Trump supporters always respond to claims that Democrats are better at creating jobs by pointing to Trump’s positive pre-Covid job creation numbers in his first three years in office (from 2017-2019)—which they fail to acknowledge are actually significantly lower than Obama’s last three years of job creation (from 2014-2016):
In Trump’s first three years he produced 6,374,000 jobs, so the Trump economy produced over 1,600,000 FEWER jobs than in Obama’s last three years, when Obama Grew 8,042,000 new jobs--AND Obama’s job successes also royally set the table for Trump’s continued but ever-reducing success--that ended so disastrously in the covid- and mismanagement-driven debacle of his 2020 job numbers.

Also, the GOP’s disastrous 21st Century job numbers don’t end with Trump: Remember that Bush’s fiscal mismanagement started a massive economic crash that lost almost 8 million jobs from May of 2008 until February of 2010 when Obama finally got thing turned around. This also means that the front end of Obama’s term shows about 5,000,000 million lost jobs that were simply the consequence of the Bush disaster--that it took Obama about 14 months to turn around. However, once Obama turned the situation around, jobs grew every single month from March 2010 onward, through the end of the Obama Administration, (and during the Trump Administration at a declining rate), through February of 2020.

(Trump also lost jobs because he did a horrible job of managing Covid response), but, even conceding that say, 5 million of Trump’s 9.3 million lost 2020 jobs were due to the pandemic, the same’s true of the 5.05 million jobs Obama lost in 2009--since the 2008 crash was absolutely Bush’s and the Republicans’ fault.)

5. Just random luck? Nope! Democrats almost always create more jobs. In fact, since 1921, Democratic Administrations have helped grown almost 300% more jobs than the GOP….and that includes Reagan’s good numbers. How big a difference?
So, since 1921 Republicans have overseen the growth of 33.2 million jobs. Not bad, and those jobs net out to 639 thousand jobs created per year.
Democrats? Well, in fewer years in office (49.83 versus 52), Democrats created 95.1 million jobs, ie., about 1.9 million jobs a year. That’s about 1.26 more jobs per year (and over 100,000 more jobs per month), for over a century, beyond what Republicans created! 
AND, if you are looking for an election day handout, the Republican versus Democratic century-long lob results are already in standard business card format and can be printed in batches of 10,000 for about .01 per, two-sided, four-color business card for a penny a card. Here’s the link to the story with all the images in it:  A CLOSING ARGUMENT--21ST CENTURY JOBS: Republicans Lost Jobs, Democrats Grew 23.3 Million

MORE EVIDENCE OF REPUBLICAN JOB INCOMPETENCE AND DEMOCRATIC SUCCESS!
6. The entire economy, on the average, “Grows Startlingly Better Under Democrats”—Newsweek. And how can we possibly overstate that Republicans “…are so Bad for the Economy”—New York Times?

7. Herbert Hoover lost 6.2 million jobs (~25% of all US jobs) during four years in office. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Employment_Graph_-_1920_to_1940.svg#filelink

8. Franklin Roosevelt added 13.2 million American jobs in ten years—(an about 67% increase): Between 1933 and 1942 American jobs grew from about 25.7 million jobs to 42.9 million jobs.

9. Between Jan. 1933 and Jan. 1953 Truman and Roosevelt almost doubled American Jobs—from 25.7 million jobs to 50.2 million jobs.
10. It’s the economy, stupid—and inflation or not, it’s jobs that grow the good economy and lift the working/middle classes….and it is perpetually Democrats who actually produce good jobs, rather than the Republicans, who just talk about it, while actually failing miserably to bring more good jobs to workers.
With these stunning differences in job prodjction, it is hard to argue that the difference is just coincidence, and here are some of the differences in policies supported by Republican Administrations that reduce job growth:
Some Reasons Why Republicans (Intentionally) Grow So Many Fewer Jobs

The reality? “Markets” (and Republicans) often value job destruction highly:
1) Corporate profits (and Republican political contributions) are constrained by paying more money to more workers.
2) investors with Billions make a good portion of their money buying distressed assets after economies crash: According to Forbes, as of Dec. 2021, Billionaires’ wealth had increased from $8 Trillion to $13 Trillion in less than two years during COVID. Before Covid, Elon Musk was worth about $30 Billion--as of Jan. 2022 he controls $294.2 Billion, Jeff Bezos’s wealth went up 67% to $202.6 Billion, and the wealth of the world’s top 10 Billionaires doubled.
3) Republican Administrations don’t oppose massive job layoffs, even when all that is happening is that hedge funds, per Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital example, are looting companies and firing workers in order to seize a company’s assets and indirectly retirement pensions for their own gain.

4) When unemployment is higher, employers can pay less to get better workers who will work under less ideal conditions. When unemployment is low, workers who want a better wage or who are dissatisfied with working conditions, often have the chance to change jobs and of work in more satisfying conditions for equivalent of better pay.

5) Republicans often don’t support the social safety net programs that allow mothers and those helping elders to get enough help so they can go back to work.
6) Republicans in Congress refuse to support a national increase in the minimum wage, so some workers struggle to survive on $7.25 and hour, when national productivity increases would support a minimum wage of about $26 an hour.

7) Most importantly, reducing excessive profits may reduce massive political donations for Republican candidates….such as the $1.6 Billion gift a right-wing think tank received this election cycle.
Democrats like creating jobs because:
1) Employed workers have more money to spend and economic prosperity increases, spending increases and tax revenues go up--and more money becomes available to help more people in many different ways.
2) There is more freedom to work toward unionizing job sites when there are other jobs available in the workplace.
3) It is harder to intimidate and intellectually control workers when they can move to other jobs.
4) Happier, wealthier workers have more time to study and learn and better educated workers tend to vote more often for Democrats.
5) The country works better when people have better jobs and more money.