Understand that private sector increases are due to the finalization of the tax compromise between Obama and congressional Republicans. FoxNews has reported that employers interviewed on this circumstance tell the press that, indeed, it was the tax compromise making tax rates final for another two years that was the motivation for the new hirings.
What is just as important, here, is what did not happen. Answer: the 2009 Stimulus. Understand that only 4% of that bill's allocation was for "infrastructure and contracts" and that total was spread out over three years. The truth of the Stimulus can be found, in part, at the government's own site reporting on the matter.
At recovery.gov , we have these facts about the jobs aspect of the Stimulus. $251,379,564,227 was set aside for "contracts, loans and grants." In simpler terms, that rather large appearing number is $251.3 billion dollars, one fourth of the total set-asides found in the February 2009 Stimulus. In total, this government run site reports only 675,840 jobs created because of this legislation, not the 3.5 million number you hear Obama repeating over and over again.
We should not forget that this bill was sold to us as a jobs creator and economic stimulus. Turns out it was neither.
Point of this post: to make clear that any and all economic recovery occurring with regard to jobs and economic stimulus is the result of a new focus in Congress as the result of the midterm elections. It is no "coincident" that the 297,000 jobs created in the private sector came within days of the tax compromise. We should never forget that this compromise is much more the result of Republican leadership than anything Obama and the Dems claim for themselves.
The GOP has a controlling influence in the United States Congress and things are suddenly getting better, as a result.
End Notes:
1. National Review Online gives these totals from the Stimulus:
Summary:
$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts$380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants and Children program$300 million for grants to combat violence against women$2 billion for federal child-care block grants$6 billion for university building projects$15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships$4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion for “youths” up to the age of 24$1 billion for community-development block grants$4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities”$650 million for digital-TV coupons; $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”We recommend this article (hyperlinked above) entitled "50 De-Stimulating Facts."
2. The Congressional Budget Office (the CBO) estimates that between 900,000 to 2.5 million jobs have been created or saved because of the Stimulus. cf. the CBO report in PDF here.
Note: if Obama can claim 2.5 million jobs "created or saved" giving his Administration a 9.8% unemployment average, what must be the total number of jobs "created or saved" in the Bush Administration with his eight year unemployment average of 5.2% including 2008? We would argue that if Obama claims 900,000 to 2.5 million, surely we can claim 20 to 40 million jobs created or saved by Bush economic policies. We should not forget that under Bush, this nation experienced 52 consecutive weeks of growth (per GDP numbers) , an all-time record in American history. The Bush years saw the second best economy in history and the beginnings of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
3. In 1993, the first year of Bill Clinton's presidency, the unemployment rate had risen to 7%, close to the same percentage under Obama's first months in office. The Clinton stimulus was only 16 billion, compared to the near 1 trillion of the Obama bill; clear evidence that the Obama legislation was and is much more about paybacks and earmarks than jobs creation. Along these lines, you might find this article interesting reading.
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