Country Has Lost 1,134,000 Nonfarm Payroll Jobs Under President Obama

From January 2009 until July 2012, the United States has lost a total of 1,134,000 nonfarm payroll jobs. This works out to a total of 26,372 nonfarm payroll jobs that have been lost per month since Barack Obama was sworn in as President in early 2009.

When President Obama took over in 2009, the US economy was in really bad shape. Let's look at the nonfarm payroll job numbers from the first six months of Obama's Presidency:

2009-01-01, -818,000
2009-02-01, -724,000
2009-03-01, -799,000
2009-04-01, -692,000
2009-05-01, -361,000
2009-06-01, -482,000

In January of 2009, the national unemployment rate was 7.6%. By July of 2009, this number had swelled to 9.4%.

In the second half of 2009, the economy continued to lose jobs:

2009-07-01, -339,000
2009-08-01, -231,000
2009-09-01, -199,000
2009-10-01, -202,000
2009-11-01, -42,000
2009-12-01, -171,000

By the end of 2009, the national unemployment rate was 10%.

The economy continued to lose jobs in January and February of 2010, giving President Obama the unenviable streak of being in the White House for fourteen straight months of negative job growth. However, things turned around in March, April and May:

2010-01-01, -40,000
2010-02-01, -35,000
2010-03-01, 189,000
2010-04-01, 239,000
2010-05-01, 516,000
2010-06-01, -167,000

The second half of 2010 started slow but ended with positive jobs growth:

2010-07-01, -58,000
2010-08-01, -51,000
2010-09-01, -27,000
2010-10-01, 220,000
2010-11-01, 121,000
2010-12-01, 120,000

September of 2010 would be the last month of negative job growth for President Obama (at least up until July of 2012).

Here are the nonfarm payroll numbers from January of 2011 until July of 2012:

2011-01-01, 110,000
2011-02-01, 220,000
2011-03-01, 246,000
2011-04-01, 251,000
2011-05-01, 54,000
2011-06-01, 84,000
2011-07-01, 96,000
2011-08-01, 85,000
2011-09-01, 202,000
2011-10-01, 112,000
2011-11-01, 157,000
2011-12-01, 223,000
2012-01-01, 275,000
2012-02-01, 259,000
2012-03-01, 143,000
2012-04-01, 68,000
2012-05-01, 87,000
2012-06-01, 64,000
2012-07-01, 163,000

Note: June and July numbers are still preliminary

--

All of these numbers give us a total loss of 1,134,000 nonfarm payroll jobs since President Obama took office in January of 2009.

--

The additional problem with these numbers is that the United States needs to create something along the line of 125,000 jobs per month just to keep up with population growth.

On top of that, you also need to create extra jobs on top of the 125,000 per month to put millions of unemployed people back to work. After all, the unemployment rate is still well over 8%.

So, in a month like June of 2012, the 64,000 nonfarm payroll jobs that were added was not nearly enough. This is the problem that the country is currently facing - how can tepid economic growth be turned into robust economic growth?

Source: Historical Unemployment Rates