Green Shoots

[we vs us]

The economy added 162,000 jobs in March, a major uptick from the month before, which was a loss of 14,000. Up to 48,000 of the March jobs came from census hiring, but even without that the gain would still be +114,000. 

Obviously it's slow going (unemployment still hovering just under 10%) but an undeniable improvement. 

The White House's graph looks like this:

[Conan71]

Nice to see the Obama Admin isn't campaigning against the Bush Admin anymore.

[guido911]

The one question I asked when I saw this was:  How can 162,000 jobs be added and the unemployment rate remain unchanged?  Here is an article that I think answered my question:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/04/02/john-lott-unemployment-numbers-mixed/

[we vs us]

Nice to see the Obama Admin isn't campaigning against the Bush Admin anymore.

More properly, campaigning against the last 12 months of Bush Admin.  Which happens to coincide with some pretty awful job loss, as per the graph.

In general, it's going to be nearly impossible to not campaign against the Bush Admin for next couple of cycles.  They have been the font of so many juicy (and popularly objectionable) things, it's just easy to do. 

Personally, I hope the Bush Admin stays in the popular mind as something to campaign against.  I really don't want to repeat that era any time soon.

[YoungTulsan]

Can I hate both Bush and Obama?

[we vs us]

Can I hate both Bush and Obama?

It's a free country.

[waterboy]

Conan, how else would you show historical data like this? I guess you could leave off the name of the leader of the country during the 12 months preceding 2008 but it would look strange and I would guess you'd say unfair. Or you could leave off both leaders' names and make it look like they each had nothing to do with the results. If this were a presentation showing a company's growth, I would certainly expect that it would be put in some context rather than just date.

Is that what you mean by "reach around"?

Btw, my reading of those figures is that the job loss is viewed monthly whereas the % unemployment is probably cumulative. It is designed to show a trend.

[guido911]

Does any of this make sense to anyone.

New jobless claims rise:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/08/new-jobless-claims-rise/?test=latestnews