President Obama has continued to do the near impossible, with the August jobs report showing that businesses have added 15.1 million jobs since early 2010. That makes this the longest streak of total job growth on record — 78 months and counting. Seventy-eight months.
Guess who gets no credit for this pretty amazing feat that is hardly a one-off since it’s been going on for 78 months? Yeah, that’s right. President Barack Obama, that’s who gets no credit.
MSNBC Last Word producer Kyle Griffin laid the overall numbers out:
U.S. Unemployment Rate
Aug 2010: 9.5%
Aug 2011: 9.0%
Aug 2012: 8.1%
Aug 2013: 7.3%
Aug 2014: 6.2%
Aug 2015: 5.1%
Aug 2016: 4.9%— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 2, 2016
Jesse Lee, White House Director of Progressive Media and Online Response, remarked wryly on Twitter, “In alt universe where Romney won, these #s would be getting chiseled under his face on Mount Rushmore as we speak.”
Sadly, that’s very true. Read it and weep Republicans.
What’s all of the fuss about? As Republicans continue to run on how horrible things are under Barack Obama, reality tells quite another story.
Jason Furman, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement, “The economy added 151,000 jobs in August, as the unemployment rate and labor force participation both held steady.”
Furman continued saying the August addition was “following robust job growth in both June and July as the unemployment rate held steady at 4.9 percent.”
“So far in 2016, job growth has averaged a solid 182,000 jobs a month, well above the pace of about 80,000 jobs a month needed to maintain a low and stable unemployment rate, and hourly earnings for private-sector workers have increased at an annual rate of 2.8 percent, much faster than the pace of inflation.”
So, what we have here are numbers that if Obama were a Republican, the press would be fawning all over him, bowing down to his every exhale of non-human breath (recall the press worship of George W Bush for a refresher). But because Obama is a Democrat, and therefor not one to be worshiped let alone credited, we have yet to hear about Obama the Job Creator president.
This isn’t a partisan analysis, the man has made history month after month, year after year. It’s time to stop pretending this has nothing to do with Obama.
It’s time to start crediting President Obama and his policy initiatives, including those progressive ideas buried in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus package (as detailed in “The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era” by Michael Grunwald, a must read) as well as Obamacare, which has been a compelling job creator.
Republicans have been promising jobs via trickle down for decades to no avail. Obama came into office and invested in liberal priorities like education, research, progressive energy (lessening dependence on foreign oil), and infrastructure — and boom. Jobs. For months and months and months and years and years and years. It’s raining jobs.
Sure, things could be better and we need to keep fighting for good pay and decent work, but Obama’s job record is an undeniable endorsement of the liberal platform he’s championed.
It’s time to start saying, “Thanks, Obama!” for real.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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