We created the Jobs

[Notes to defenders of the Obama administration's record on job creation]

Basic Stance

Let's give ourselves credit for creating the jobs and finding our way in a new, tougher economy. This administration hasn't done nothing.

If the economy had fallen over, if the banks had been let to fail, things would have been much worse; it would have been 1930 over again. At least the Administration acted on that. But the banks which made the problem got bailed out. One banker, I think, was prosecuted. And all the while the rest of us were left to scramble for a living. A lot of us lost our homes, especially a lot of blacks, who were targeted by the mortgage fraudsters.

Unh-unh. There's been good things about this administration. But not going to give them cred for the employment recovery; they did the minimum, not anything that deserves accolades.

Followups

On claims that employment is good

Oh, you mean like the claim that employment is good, when 5% of the public still wishes it could find work? (Just mouse over the chart, subtract U-3 from U-6.) And that the Obama administration somehow created jobs when it did almost everything possible to avoid doing that? And that doesn't even count the people who are working the s..t jobs that are most of what have been created since the depression started.

(Then there's minority and youth unemployment, which is awful. The numbers for black youth are heartbreaking.)

The definition of U-6

Where you get that s..t from? Here's the definition of U-6, straight from the horse's mouth: "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force."

The standard definition of unemployment, also known as U-3, is a measure for good times, not during a deep depression.