Stimulus Spending And Job Growth: Final Update

Well, here we are at last. The final time to update Obama's stimulus-driven job creation results. For the month of February, there was a net gain of 192,000 jobs. That is the best monthly performance we've seen since October of last year, which itself was unmatched since April of 2010. And although it is good, it is still well below what's needed to drive the economy forward. December and January's job figures were revised upwards slightly according to the latest data from the US Dept of Labor.

Barack Obama said his stimulus package would create approximately 4 million "new" jobs over two years, and that unemployment would not exceed 8%. That assumes of course, that there would not be a net loss of existing jobs. In order to create 4 million new jobs in 24 months, the Obama administration would have had to create approximately 166,667 jobs per month to reach his target, assuming linear job growth. That scenario is shown as violet in the following graph.

I developed a curve showing what I thought might be a more "Likely" scenario -- plotted as light blue in the following graph. As you can see from the graph, the actual trend was worse than I had predicted -- plotted as yellow and red. The trend generally followed the trajectory I had originally envisioned until about May of this year (Month 15). Since then, job growth has been trending upwards slightly, but at a very anemic rate.


President Obama is only about 5,308,000 jobs below his original projection. Oh, too bad! He "missed it by that much"...


Sorry I was so late in posting this article, but my new job is keeping me busy. I'm up at 5:00 AM every morning so I can get out of the house by 6:00 AM, and to work by 7:00 AM. I work 'til 5:00 PM every day, and I'm not home until 6:00 PM (or later if I have to stay over). Then I try to get something to eat, call my wife (who is still in NJ), watch a bit of TV, check my e-mail, and then before you know it... it's time for bed (so I can do it all over again the next day). I often have to work on weekends or holidays, because the plant is so busy that they are operating nearly 24/7. Good for business, but bad for Maintenance people and Plant Engineers... sigh.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. Just explaining why I haven't had much time for blogging. Thank God that Obama found this job for me. (:D)

I'm scheduled to close on the purchase of a house here in Murfreesboro, TN on March 28th. Now all I have to do is sell the one in NJ. I've lowered the price on it twice already. Hoping I won't have to do that again. I'm single-handedly ruining the housing values in Downtown, NJ. Pray that God will bless those special people who buy the house that our family has enjoyed so much for 25 years. We're going to miss it... including my daughter who cried at the thought she might not ever again see the home where she grew up.