How many jobs has Obama created for Americans?

(Baonghean.vn) - US President-elect Donald Trump, during his election campaign, promised to create a “dynamic boom economy” that would create 25 million jobs in the next 10 years. The real estate billionaire has repeatedly affirmed that his policies will put American workers at the top priority and criticized the results achieved by President Barack Obama, calling the latest jobs report before the election a “disaster”.

US President Barack Obama. Photo: IBTimes.

However, the available data shows something completely different. The October 2016 jobs report showed that the US economy added 161,000 jobs in the month and the unemployment rate fell to 4.9%. According to the Washington Post, the report shows that the US economy “is gradually emerging from the shadow of the Great Recession, although it is still not at pre-2008 levels.”

In January 2009, Obama faced an economy in “free fall”. Millions of people lost their jobs, the unemployment rate reached 7.8% in the first month of his presidency. By October 2009, the number jumped to 10.3%. During his 8 years in the White House, Obama reduced the unemployment rate by half, to approximately 5%. This is something many economists commented positively when talking to CNNMoney.

Since taking office, Obama has created 9.3 million new jobs. However, in his final State of the Union Address, the US President said: “We are in the midst of the longest stretch of private sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs, two years of the highest job growth since the 1990s, unemployment cut in half.”

The White House arrived at the 14 million figure by counting private-sector jobs since the nadir of the Great Recession, rather than since Mr. Obama was sworn in in January 2009. The administration argues that policies designed to pull the country out of the crisis take time to take effect.

As usual, Obama's achievements in the employment issue are evaluated from the time he took office until December 2015. If so, he still lags far behind former President Bill Clinton, because the Clinton administration added 21 million jobs to the economy.

Obama's 9.3 million figure is on par with former President Ronald Reagan's, even though the US population is much larger today than it was in the 1980s. However, Obama surpasses George W. Bush, whose administration added only 5.7 million jobs to the economy.

Yet Americans are earning less than they did before Obama took office, after adjusting for inflation. The American middle class now has incomes that are about the same as they were in the mid-1990s. The president also acknowledged that inequality persists.

The Obama administration also spent more than it took in each year. The debt-to-GDP ratio rose from 48% in 2009 to 75% in January 2016. However, the only US president in recent years to end his term with a lower debt-to-GDP ratio than when he took office was Clinton.

“For the past seven years, our goal has been a growing economy that works better for everyone,” Obama said in his State of the Union address in January. “We’ve made progress, but we still need to do more. And despite all the political debates over the years, there are many areas where Americans agree.”

Thu Giang

(According to IBTimes)