Graph: US Employment to Population Ratio, Color-Coded by Party in Power, with Analysis

My love of graphs is legendary on my blog, and recently I came across an interesting graph on The Atlantic in an article called 8.6% Unemployment: The Good, the Bad, and the Mysterious in the Jobs Report. In it, there is a graph showing the current ratio between population and employment- that is, the relationship between the number of people in America who are around and the number of them who are gainfully employed. I believe it is a better and truer employment number than the phony 'unemployment' stat that is tossed around.

In order to get a better picture of what is going on, I colored coded the graph based on which political party controlled the various policy making institutions at the national level- yellow shading indicates that the GOP controlled the Presidency and Democrats the Congress, orange that control was GOP President/GOP Senate/Democrat House, red for GOP President/GOD Congress, dark blue for Democrat President/Democrat Congress, light blue for Democrat President/Democrat Senate/GOP House, and green for Democrat President/GOP Congress.

As you can see from the graph, the percentage of the population of citizens in our nation with a job has fluctuated in recent years from 56% to 65%. When more people have jobs, more goods and services are produced, more people have a sense of self-worth, and tax money to the government is higher, and these are all good things, so our goal is a higher percentage.

Based on this graph, there were previously considerable gains during earlier Democrat Presidents with Democrat Congresses- as bad as the Carter years were, 1976 to 1979 saw a sharp rise and so did 1993 to 1995. This sort of pattern should have predicted similar results from 2009 to 2011, but instead that time period saw the continued plunging of the line.

The worst drops came when Republicans controlled the White House and Democrats controlled Congress, such as from 2007 to 2009 or 1991 to 1993 or 1975 to 1977. This would suggest divided government is bad, especially when the Democrats control Congress, although I would point out that during a period of Democrat President and GOP Congress seems to be the longest and steadiest rise in the number, but this is only one data point, so I would take it with caution.

What about period when a Republican controlled the White House and Congress? The time period to look at for this would be 2001-2007, and on a lesser scale 1981-1987, and in spite of the recessions during these periods, we can see that the number does go up and down a bit but ends up roughly in the same place.

How does this data help up in 2012? Again, the data is not terribly helpful because it is rather inconclusive, but we can draw some conclusions from it. First, President Obama is utterly and flatly wrong to suggest that Republican policies always fail- the data here does not demonstrate that at all. Second, Republicans who suggest that Democratic policies always fail are also wrong- the data does not seem to suggest that either.

The data best suggests the conclusion that Republicans should control Congress- both the House and the Senate- because it is during those time periods, regardless of who the President was, that the American people seemed to be best off. Even the recent introduction of a little bit of GOP control of Congress- the House from 2011 to today- seems to have steadied the rate. This analysis though is heavily influenced by how bad Democrat control of Congress was from 2007 to 2011 and the steep drop in the population employment ratio during that time.

The data is less clear on the suggestion of which party should be in control of the White House. Carter and Clinton both rate well, but Obama rates poorly. Reagan rates well, Nixon and HW Bush and the first 6 years of W Bush were static, but those last two years of W Bush were poor. Therefore, the data suggest that Democrats may be better in the White House, but not Obama, he just sucks as President.

As much as it pains me to say this, this data suggests that the best possible scenario for the American people is for Obama to drop out of the race, Hillary Clinton to win the White House, and the GOP to win large governing majorities in the House and Senate. Since this scenario is unlikely, the next best thing is for the Republicans to win the White House and Congress. Worse than that is for Obama to be re-elected and the GOP to win Congress. The worse possible situation, admittedly based on those really bad results form 2009-2011, would be for Obama to win re-election and the Democrats to win Congress.

How does this analysis fit with other analysis that I have done? Pretty well, I think.

In Graph: Non-Defense Spending Relative to GDP, Color-Coded by Party in Power, or the Obama Hockey Stick, I noted this:

The conclusion that I draw is that Republicans keep federal defense spending as a share of GDP near the historical average when they are in power, but Democrats are more inconsistent- there was Clinton on one side of the ledger, and Carter and Obama on the other. In particular, Democrat Barack Obama is the worst President in the history of the United States when it comes to this measure.

The lesson here is more clear- under Democrats (control of Congress), non-defense spending increased at a greater percentage than GDP increased, and that giving Democrats total control of government (President and Congress) resulting in irresponsible explosions in non-defense spending and/or the collapse of the GDP. Putting Republicans in charge seems like the best bet- they keep this measure steady or decrease it, either by cutting spending or by increasing the GDP.

In Graph: U.S. Foreclosure Rates, Colored-Coded by Party in Power, I noted this:

My read of the graph is that the introduction of the variable of 'Democrat' in 2006 caused the situation to worsen, the bad situation was made worse by the election of Democratic President Obama, and it is still too soon to tell what sort of effect the GOP taking back 1/2 of Congress has had on the situation.

In Graph: Public Debt Over Time, Color-Coded by Party in Power, I wrote:

The conclusion that I have reached is that the party that controls Congress matters a lot more than the party that controls the Presidency in determining the amount of debt that our nation owes to the public. Under Republican Presidents, the debt went up and down by small amounts. Under Democrat Presidents, the debt decreased by a large amount and exploded by a large amount. But when you look at the party in control of Congress you see the largest changes in the amount of debt. Democrat control of Congress has been responsible for the most increases in the debt, while Republican control of Congress was responsible for the largest decreases and stability.

Based on this data, I suggest that next election you pay more attention to who you are voting for in Congress- we need to make sure that Republicans are in control of both the House and Senate by strong and sizable majorities. It is of lesser importance who controls the White House, although I would venture to guess that a Clinton Democrat is different enough than a radical Obama Democrat that in this upcoming election it does matter who is President, and it needs to be anyone other than Obama (a moderate Democrat or a Republican).

These analysis of recent data hopefully can better inform your choices in the coming election, and most importantly as is suggested in all four, President Barack Obama must not win re-election.

UPDATE: Loyal reader and subscriber Darryl emailed me and suggested that the reason for the increase in the population/employment ratio into the 1980's was the number of women entering the workforce during this time. He wrote about it further in his post Jobs, Prosperity, and Psychological Profiles. Check it out.