Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The key is to look at the rates of unenmployment. Here is the data for the 1992-2005 period:

Average annual unemployment rates for 1992-2005

1992    7.5% (9.6 million)

1993    6.9

1994    6.1

1995    5.6

1996    5.4

1997    4.9

1998    4.5

1999    4.2

2000    4.0% (5.7 million)

2001    4.7

2002    5.8

2003    6.0

2004    5.5

2005  5.1% (7.6 million)

Links: one, two, three.

From these, we can see that while the employment picture is getting better after bottoming out in 2003, it is still far from from what it was in 2000. The two key figures are:

• 33% increase in unemployment rolls: 7.6 million people were umemployed in 2005, while only 5.7 were jobless in 2000. A net effective job loss of 1.9 million.
  
  
• 25% increase in umemployment rate: unemployment rate was 5.1% in 2005 compared to 4% in 2000.

ps: the first link says that unemployment rate was 4.7% last month, but that could be a seasonal or incidental blip. Quarterly figures will need to be seen.

In summary, the economy left a greater number and share of people unemployed.

Next installment: The myth of Bush tax cuts.