U.S. payrolls rose 50,000 in December, less than expected; unemployment rate falls to 4.4%

[progree]

20. "this tells it all" - yes it does. I like that it's percent change, and that it is annualized

Last edited Fri Jan 9, 2026, 12:05 PM - Edit history (1)

Until now, all I've ever seen is job creation in thousands by each president .

First this is unfair to early presidents. For example, the labor force (in thousands) under Truman was about half of what it is today. But by looking at their records as percent change, that fixes that distortion.

Second, 2-term presidents have an advantage over 1-term presidents, and even more so over less-than-one-term presidents like JFK, the way some of these graphs are -- as generally more jobs are created in 8 years than in 4 years (or nearly 3 years by JFK). By annualizing the numbers, that gets rid of that distortion