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Politics Blog

So, Speaking of Jobs...

Saw an interesting chart on Business Insider (it was actually published back in June, I think, but it bubbled up to the top for me yesterday) that I thought I'd share with y'all... it's a look at job creation in the first four years of the Bush administration vs. the first four years of the Obama administration.

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by Todd Stauffer

Here's what we're looking at. The red line in each case is private sector jobs, the green line is local government jobs, the blue line is state government jobs and the black line is the slope of the deficit.

Any thing look interesting there? You've got a Republican administration in a softer recession that vastly increased the deficit, saw massive increases in government employment and a trailing rebound in private sector employment. (The government work? Some of it no doubt resulted from 9/11. However, note that the chart doesn't actually show federal workers, just state and local.)

Under the Democratic president -- deficit is sharper, but a similar trend line, private sector employment craters harder and rebounds sooner, and government work is on a steady downslope.

So if you're a presidential candidate pitching the idea that the government is too big and the private sector needs to be convinced to hire more people -- what data are you using to reach that conclusion?

And bonus thought: at what point does the seasoned business professional start to wonder if we don't have a revenue problem when it comes to curtailing the deficit?

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