Bush Leaves With Worst Employment Rate Since WWII

Not since World War II has a president left office with a worse employment growth record than George Bush has today. This unsurprising factoid was revealed in a new analysis by the American City Business Journal. America’s employment base grew at an annual rate of .28% during the past eight years. That’s slower than all of the 11 postwar presidents.

Ironically, the previous low belonged to W’s father, George H. W. Bush. Bush Sr. had an annual job growth rate of .59% during his four years between 1989 and 1993.

Statisticians based their analysis on adjusted data they received from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. They had calculated the employment growth rates for administrations of every single president since Harry Truman.

Lyndon Johnson, who served as president from ’63-’69, saw the best average, with an annual rate of 3.74%

The Journal’s study considered five subsets of job growth: private-sector, manufacturing, retail-trade, and government employment. Bush Jr. scored the lowest in four out of five of these categories.

The one category, where Bush ranked 9^th (out of 11) was construction employment. Johnson ranked top in 3 of the categories and Truman ranked top in the other two (construction and retail-trade employment).

Keep your eye on the ticker at Employment Crossing.