Job Losses Graph

I rather like the graph on usnews.com showing the number of jobs lost or gained every month for the last few years.




It makes a few things pretty clear:

The trend has been one of improvement for over a year now' after a year of slowly winding down the job losses. We haven't really put a dent in all those job losses from 2008 and 2009 though. Until we do we really can't say that the economy is back on track.

Our situation really can't be blamed on Obama. The worst months of job losses happened at the end of the Bush administration, and the losses slowly tapered down right from the start of the Obama administration. It might be blamed on the Democrats in Congress, but even that seems a stretch since I don't remember them pushing anything big past Bush during those years. The big causes seem to have been the housing bubble, which happened entirely during the Bush administration and could reasonably be blamed on politicians since it was obvious and should have been stopped, and the inflated oil prices which could not have been stopped by any American politician.