About 12 years ago, there was a controversial claim (based in part on some of my analysis) that Obama was the most fiscally conservative president of the 1980-2012 period, which includes Reagan.
First, here is total civilian employment from 1969 to the present. As you can see, there’s an upward trend line, with occasional blips associated with recessions (if we wanted to be super-rigorous, we would adjust for factors such as size of the labor force and size of the working-age population, but let’s keep things simple).
Second, let’s zoom in on the Bush-Obama years. The most notable thing about this chart was the big loss of jobs because of the financial crisis, followed by a slow recovery.
Third, let’s zoom in on the Trump-Biden years. What stands out in this chart is the massive loss of jobs during the pandemic, followed by an initially rapid recovery and then stumbling progress.
Having absorbed this background information, now let’s look at the new controversial claim. Simon Rosenberg tweeted earlier this month that almost all jobs in recent decades have been created when Democrats were in the White House.
This certainly seems like a damning indictment of Republicans, but is it true?
Lou Jacobsen of Politifact says yes, but with some qualifications.
Are Democratic presidents better at creating jobs and driving the economy? …We caught the latest iteration on X, in a post by Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist in Washington, D.C. …The talking point…has merit. But it ignores caveats around divided governance and lucky timing. …What is the catch? Attributing job creation to policies or presidents isn’t as clear as it might seem. The Republican Congress of 1995 to 2001 might deserve a share of the credit for the job growth under Clinton… In crises especially, the parties have historically worked together. When faced with the 2008 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, George W. Bush and Trump “chose the policy responses that Democrats favored,” said Dan Mitchell, a libertarian economist. …Also, Rosenberg chose a favorable time frame for Democrats. …Job creation under each president also depends on luck. …In one recent example, the number of jobs created under Trump would have been higher had a once-in-a-century pandemic not hit during his fourth year in office.
I appreciate that Lou gave me the chance to add one of my comments to his analysis.
But I want to elaborate. Here’s everything I sent to him as part of our email exchange.
Very convenient to start after the Reagan years. Setting aside that laughable example of cherry-picking, Rosenberg’s number is largely driven by the financial crisis at the end of the George W. Bush years and the COVID crisis at the end of the Trump years. A partisan Democrat could argue “so what?” The net result, after all, was big job losses at the end of the Bush and Trump years. As a libertarian wonk, I don’t have to worry about blindly supporting one side or the other. Instead, I’ll simply point out that Bush and Trump chose the policy responses (bailouts/spending and shutdowns/spending, respectively) that Democrats favored. The real lesson to be learned is that good policies create jobs and bad policies reduce jobs, and it doesn’t matter whether there is an R or D after a politician’s name.
And I concluded by sharing a link to this column, which expands on my point about policy being the most important variable, not partisan affiliation.
The bottom line is that any analysis based on party affiliation will be senseless because we had one pro-market Republican (Reagan, who conveniently wasn’t even included in Rosenberg’s analysis) and lots of mediocre-to-bad Republicans (Bush I, Bush II, and Trump).
Likewise, there was one reasonably good Democrat (Clinton) while the others (Obama and Biden) were statist.
Dan Mitchell is co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and Chairman of the Board. He is an expert in international tax competition and supply-side tax policy.
