Reclaiming Common Sense

The Magic Wand Economy


Former President Obama lampooned candidate Donald Trump's plans to create more jobs, and an environment for creating more jobs, after he took office. Obama said that some jobs were gone "forever." Pundits were proclaiming doom and gloom should candidate Trump win the election. Obama, during the past week has been saying that this jobs creation under President Trump is the ex-President's economy, not the Trump Economy. Then we received President Trump's 21st jobs report. This column has already produced the following articles regarding the Jobs Report Data from October:

Former President Obama doesn't want to compare his job losses during his first 21 months with the job gains of President Trump, so he cherry picks the final two years of his Presidency. Just as it is better to compare the five Presidents at the same point in their Presidencies, it is better to compare the same months of the year for President Trump and former President Obama.  What happened?


President Trump wins the Total Job Creation battle. The Current Population Survey data measures the number of full-time jobs and part-time jobs added to or lost from the economy. If combined then they are the "employed" data from the CPS data set. President Trump has added 6.425 million jobs since his first jobs report, February 2017. (The collection date is the 12th of the month. The inauguration is on the 20th of January.) President Trump had a strong February through November of 2017 versus Obama's 2015.  He also had a better February 2018 through July 2018  versus Obama's 2016. President Trump is leading Mr. Obama by 650,000 jobs.


President Trump wins the Full-time Job Creation battle. President Trump has seen 6.652 million full-time jobs created through October of 2018. Mr. Obama saw 4.598 million full-time jobs created between February 2015 and October 2016.


Mr. Obama won the part-time job creation battle. Mr Obama added 35,000 part-time jobs. President Trump trimmed 187,000 Part-time jobs.


President Trump wins the Unemployment level cutting battle. President trump cut 2.378 million unemployed (U-3) workers. Mr. Obama cut 2.051 million unemployed workers.


Mr. Obama won the workforce population growth battle, for now. Mr Obama oversaw the addition of 4.598 million potential workers to President Trump's 4.432 million workers. Remember that during Month 96 of Mr. Obama's time in office that there was a downward revision to the workforce population which allowed Mr. Obama's participation rate to tick higher during January of 2017. 


What about the Private Sector worker growth numbers. Former President Obama touted the longest streak of seasonally adjusted (SA) private sector CES "jobs" growth. This was an economic urban legend. The seasonally adjusted CES private sector "job" creation streak ended May 2016 with the release of the June 2016 report. Let's look at the NSA CES data.


Mr. Obama saw a creation of 6.408 million private sector workers or 7.115 million non-farm payroll workers. He saw mining and logging drop by 21,000 workers. His largest gains were in:

  • 1.353 million workers in  Leisure and Hospitality (LAH,)
  • 1.322 million workers added in Education and Health Services (EHS.) and
  • 1.276 million in Professional Business Services.
  • 930,000 Construction workers added
  • 216,000 Manufacturing workers added.


President Trump has added 6.760 Million private sector jobs or 7.360 million non-farm payroll jobs since taking office.  He has seen growth in all sectors, except information technology. There have been

  • 1.477 million PBS workers added to the economy,
  • 1.252 million EHS workers added to the economy, and
  • 1.236 million LAH workers added to the economy.  
  • 1 million construction jobs created,
  • 523,000 Manufacturing jobs created, and
  • 127,000 mining/logging jobs created. The only sector that has lost workers is the Information Technology (IT) sector, and that is just a loss of 2000 workers. He continues to see

So President Trump added more private sector workers and more non-farm payroll workers than Mr. Obama. President Trump added more Construction, Manufacturing, and Mining and Logging jobs, higher paying jobs, than Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama added more LAH and and more EHS workers than President Trump, and these are lower wag paying jobs.


Jobs are rising. Participation is rising. Mr. Obama wanted us to compare his final two years in office versus President Trump's first 21 months. Comparing the same month data, first 21 months versus first 21 months wasn't an option for Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama did win the low wage, part-time job creation battle. President Trump created more full-time jobs, dropped unemployment more than Mr. Obama, and saw a spike in higher paying jobs.  Game - Set- Match.


It's the economy.