GOP Always Falls Down on the Jobs

President Bush appeared in Ohio, Missouri and Indiana this month to tell Middle America that the U.S. economy was now "looking up." But a Labor Department report that employers shed another 93,000 jobs in August intensified public concerns about a "jobless recovery" and persistent unemployment. "We've got a short-term problem," the president acknowledged, but he added that tax cuts and economic growth would spur job creation.

The question that looms large 14 months before the 2004 election is how much, if any, of the current unemployment problem should be blamed on President Bush. The president's supporters point out that the economy was already in a recession when he took office and that employment trends were significantly affected by long-term changes in technology, demographics and foreign trade. Critics respond that Bush, as his father did, has paid too little attention to domestic economic problems and done more for the wealthy than for the jobless.

Citizens wary of contradictory partisan claims would do well to look at the record. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has monitored the ups and downs in unemployment since the 1940s. The figures show that presidents can and do have a significant effect on the job prospects of working Americans.

Simply put, these statistics indicate that high unemployment has been a chronic problem under Republican presidents. From 1947 through 2001, five Republican presidents produced an average unemployment rate of 6.3%, while five Democratic presidents produced an average unemployment rate of 4.8%.

Regardless of the specific economic conditions and challenges facing each president, average unemployment rates have been more than 30% higher under Republicans than under Democrats. Given the current size of the civilian labor force, that difference suggests that there would have been more than 2 million more jobs under President Gore than there are now under President Bush.

What about the argument that Bush inherited an economic downturn? The comparisons presented here attribute the 2001 surge in unemployment (from 4.0% to 4.7%) to Bill Clinton and similarly assume that each president's policies took effect one year after his inauguration. However, significant partisan differences appear in the data regardless of whether we assume that presidents' policies take effect in the year they assume office, the next year or even two years later.