Have 96% of jobs created over 35 years emerged under Democratic presidents?

Are Democratic presidents better at creating jobs and driving the economy? Democrats have been making this argument for more than 14 years, to Republicans’ chagrin. Former President Bill Clinton famously ticked off the "jobs score" favoring Democratic presidents in his 2012 Democratic National Convention speech.

We caught the latest iteration on X, in a post by Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist in Washington, D.C.

"Since 1989 and a new age of globalization began, 51 million jobs have been created in America. 49 million, 96%, have been created under Democratic presidents," Rosenberg wrote in the March 8 post. "Essentially all of them. Over 35 years."

The talking point still has merit. But it ignores caveats around divided governance and lucky timing.

The official source of employment numbers, tabulated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows the number of jobs created since 1989 — under Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — is 50.6 million.

Of that number, 97.4% were created under Clinton, Obama and Biden. Rosenberg told PolitiFact that he used numbers starting in February of a new president’s term; we started in January. The difference is minor.

Some economic research supports the notion that the economy under Democrats has performed especially well.

A 2014 paper by Princeton University economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson found a performance gap between the parties that was "startlingly large" over a wide variety of economic metrics.

"The U.S. economy not only grows faster, according to real (gross domestic product) and other measures, during Democratic versus Republican presidencies, it also produces more jobs, lowers the unemployment rate, generates higher corporate profits and investment, and turns in higher stock market returns," Blinder and Watson wrote. "Indeed, it outperforms under almost all standard macroeconomic metrics."

The paper’s 2014 conclusions "hold up very well if you add in Obama’s second term, Trump and Biden," Blinder told PolitiFact for this article.

What is the catch? 

Attributing job creation to policies or presidents isn’t as clear as it might seem. The Republican Congress of 1995 to 2001 might deserve a share of the credit for the job growth under Clinton — as could the Democratic House that served during Republican President Ronald Reagan’s entire presidency.

In crises especially, the parties have historically worked together. When faced with the 2008 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, George W. Bush and Trump "chose the policy responses that Democrats favored," said Dan Mitchell, a libertarian economist.

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Inflation-adjusted weekly wages “are lower today than they were 50 years ago.”

Another factor is timing.

There’s the small difference that Democratic presidents have held the presidency for a little more than 19 years in that period, compared with 16 for Republicans. 

Also, Rosenberg chose a favorable time frame for Democrats. 

If you go back to the first president to serve a full tenure during the modern age of employment statistics — Republican Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s — the economy has added 107.7 million jobs. 

Of those, 70% emerged under Democratic presidents and 30% under Republican presidents. That’s not as dramatic an edge as the 96% to 97% over the past 35 years, but it’s still a better than 2-1 margin for Democrats.

Job creation under each president also depends on luck. 

Events elsewhere in the world beyond the control of any president can affect the U.S. economy, from oil price shocks to wars.

Harry Truman, a Democrat, saw employment numbers that benefited from the post-World War II demobilization of troops. Democrat Lyndon Johnson took office right as the first wave of baby boomers turned 18.

In one recent example, the number of jobs created under Trump would have been higher had a once-in-a-century pandemic not hit during his fourth year in office. Biden has jabbed Trump over job losses in the final year of his term without any mention of COVID-19.

Two earlier Republicans, the Bushes, both left office with the nation mired in a recession, which hurt their employment totals. By contrast, their Democratic successors, Clinton and Obama, surfed the economic rebound to robust job creation figures over two full terms.

"Particularly the pandemic and the financial crisis were global in nature, and you can’t pin their roots on the president or even the U.S. as a whole," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum. "The numbers are what they are, but the implication that somehow the Democrats deserve full credit is a bit too facile." 

Rosenberg told PolitiFact that Democratic presidential policies have paid economic dividends, but he acknowledged that timing does play some role.

"While I argue that most of the difference is based on policy choices, it doesn’t mean luck and serendipity aren’t factors," he said.

Rosenberg said, "Since 1989 and a new age of globalization began, 51 million jobs have been created in America. 49 million, 96%, have been created under Democratic presidents."

His numbers for the past 35 years are on target. A longer look finds a smaller discrepancy, but the Democratic edge is still better than 2-to-1.

Policies may have played a role, but so have timing and events beyond any president’s control.

The statement is accurate but needs additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.