Explore the jobs creation record of presidents, starting with Harry S Truman.
To examine the record of presidents regarding jobs, I gathered data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the United States Department of Labor and present it in an interactive visualization.
The data shown in this visualization is all employees working at nonfarm jobs, seasonally adjusted. Data is shown in thousands of jobs. Nonfarm jobs is the statistic most commonly used when measuring the growth or contraction of employment.
For each president, data is presented by month, with the first month of each president’s term having number one. Presidents that served two full terms have data up to month 96 of their term, while others have fewer months.
Data is shown in several views:
- A table.
- A chart showing the monthly jobs count by month for each president.
- A chart showing the number of jobs added or lost by month for each president.
- A chart showing the proportional number of jobs added or lost by month for each president.
For most views, you may select a range of months and which presidents appear.
Data starts with the Truman administration in April 1945, and is current through June 2020.
Assigning a range of months to each presidential term requires making a few judgments. For example, when a new president takes office on January 20, should that month be assigned to the new president or to the predecessor? Whatever decision is made, it doesn’t have much effect on the broad trends. For the table of presidents and terms that I used, click here.
Click here to access the visualization.
For more visualizations, click here.
