Friday, May 4, 2012

The economy added a disappointing...

...115,000 jobs last month, definitely on the low end of analysts' expectations. Mitt Romney suggested that, “We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created per month.” That would certainly be great. But, as Peter Baker points out in the Times (my emphasis): 

In the last 50 years, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy added that many jobs in a single month just five times. Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush all spent their entire time in office without ever seeing a month where the country added 500,000 or more jobs. 

Only three presidents in the last half century ever saw the kind of growth Mr. Romney envisioned, and even then it was never sustained at that level. The country added more than 500,000 jobs a month just twice under Jimmy Carter and just once each during the eight-year presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

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