The graph below shows the month to month change in private employment during the 45 months from January 2008 to September 2011. Thus months 1-12 are 2008 during the Bush admininstration. Months 14 -45 are the Obama administration. And month 13 is January 2009 which was split between the 2 administrations. The numbers on the right indicate thousands of jobs gained or lost each month.

All numbers are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor. The month to month change was calculated and graphed with Excel.

The graph clearly shows accelerating job loss in 2008 hitting over 800, 0000 jobs lost in January 2009, staying in that area for several months, followed by a decreasing job loss, and emerging into positive job growth in April 2010. The job growth is too small bring down our stubbornly high unemployment rate but it is moving in the right direction. We need to create more jobs to keep up with the constantly growing labor force. We have had 17 straight months of job gains in the private sector. (The August figures are often reported as zero but that was because the number of jobs in the public sector shrank.)

There are quite a few things that could influence the economy in this time. The slow-down in job decline in early 2009 seems to suggest that stimulus plan seems to have worked but is now slowing down. The TARP program passed in late 2008 may have helped this recovery. And one could argue that things would be better or worse if we had followed a different plan.

The present jobs bill being promoted by President Obama should also stimulate job creation the same way. And there is a focus on fixing infrastructure, things we need to do anyway. One could argue certain aspects of the plan could be improved but many critics think this plan is a waste of time and money since the first stimulus didn’t work. It looks to me like it probably worked but may not have been enough so it is well worth trying something similar.