“Job Killing” And “Job Creating”

by Stuart Shapiro

The Republicans have been using the phrase “Job Killing” as an adjective before describing any legislation from the past two years so often that you know that there had to be a memo telling them to do so.  But in the wake of the employment data announced yesterday, they should probably save the term “Job Killing” for the Bush Administration and use “job creating” for the Obama Administration.

Responding the jobs report, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) noted that President Obama and the Democratic Congress have created “more jobs in 2010 than President Bush did over eight years.”

Indeed, from February 2001, Bush’s first full month in office, through January 2009, his last, the economy added just 1 million jobs. By contrast, in 2010 alone, the economy added at least 1.1 million jobs. This chart (via Think Progress), produced by Pelosi’s office, demonstrates the difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration on jobs…

Keep this in mind as Republicans credit the economic improvements over the next year or two to their election to Congress.  The reality is that as in the 1990s, it is Democratic policies (and the business cycle) that create jobs.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.