At Bloomberg Mark Whitehouse produces the chart above characterizing it as an illustration of President Obama’s “jobs legacy”. What’s wrong with the graph above?
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
January 8, 2017
At Bloomberg Mark Whitehouse produces the chart above characterizing it as an illustration of President Obama’s “jobs legacy”. What’s wrong with the graph above?
Nixon appears to have about two percent more people employed than full employment, which makes no sense.
Also, if you were to fit the data to a line, it would show a decline from start to end, which suggests that ultimately, no President can do anything. Or the baseline is incorrect. Or we are looking at a non-representative period.
Or the chosen metric is meaningless.
I really don’t care about the graph. The exercise does not differentiate “a job” from a part-time job, a suboptimal job or a low paying job. I’m too lazy right now to read Whitehouse’s piece to understand what he’s trying to accomplish, but I took one look at the graph and said to myself, “rubbish, I’m not interested.”