Unemployment Rates During First Term Democratic Administrations

During the 2008 election campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Obama promised U.S. voters that joblessness would be reduced in the United States if he were elected. Yet in the 1990s, the official unemployment rate in the United States actually remained at a high level during the first term of the Democratic Clinton Administration—when a top Obama economics advisor, former Harvard University President Larry Summers, was a high official in the U.S. Treasury Department and another Obama economics advisor, Robert Reich, was Secretary of Labor. For example:

1. Between April 1993 and May 1993 the official unemployment rate in New York State rose from 7 percent to 7.5 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City was 9.4 percent in May 1993.

2. Between May 1993 and June 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York State rose from 7.5 percent to 7.8 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City remained at 9.4 percent in June 1993. Between the first inauguration of Democratic President Clinton in January 1993 and June 1993, 190,000 factory jobs also disappeared in the United States, according to the July 3, 1993 issue of the New York Times.

3. In July 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York State was 7.5 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City was 9.5 percent.

4. Between July 1993 and August 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York State rose from 7.5 percent to 7.9 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City remained at 9.5 percent. Between July 1993 and August 1993 the number of payroll jobs throughout the United States also fell by 88,000.

5. In September 1993, California’s official jobless rate jumped to 9.4 percent, New York State’s official unemployment rate still exceeded 7 percent, New Jersey’s official unemployment rate jumped to 7.7 percent and over 12 percent of Black workers were still officially unemployed in the United States.

6. Between September 1993 and October 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York City jumped from 8.7 percent to 10.8 percent, while the official jobless rate throughout New York State jumped from 7.1 percent to 7.9 percent. In October 1993, the official unemployment rate in California also rose to 9.8 percent, while the official jobless rate in Florida was 7.1 percent.

7. The official jobless rate for Black workers in the United States was 12.5 percent in November 1993, while the official unemployment rate in New York City in November 1993 was 10.2 percent. That same month, the official unemployment rate in Los Angeles was 9.4 percent, while the official jobless rate in Michigan was 7 percent.

8. Between November 1993 and December 1993, the official jobless rate in New York City increased to 10.5 percent, while the official unemployment rate in New York State increased to 7.6 percent. During the same period, the official unemployment rate jumped from 6.5 percent to 7 percent in Florida, from 7 percent to 7.5 percent in Michigan and from 8.6 percent to 8.7 percent in California.

9. Between December 1993 and January 1994, the official unemployment rate in New York City jumped from 10.5 percent to 10.8 percent, while the official unemployment rate in California jumped from 8.7 percent to 10.1 percent during the same period. Between December 1993 and January 1994, the official unemployment rate also jumped from 5.9 percent to 6.6 percent in Illinois, from 6.2 percent to 7.2 percent in Massachusetts and from 7.3 percent to 7.5 percent in Michigan. In addition, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the United States was 13.1 percent in January 1994.

10. In February 1994, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was 12.9 percent, while the official jobless rate in California was 9 percent. The official jobless rate also jumped from 7.5 percent to 7.9 percent in Michigan and from 6 percent to 6.9 percent in Texas between January 1994 and February 1994. In addition, 10 percent of all New York City workers and 7.8 percent of all workers throughout New York State remained officially unemployed in February 1994.

11. Between February 1994 and March 1994, New York State’s official jobless rate increased from 7.8 percent to 8.1 percent, while New York City’s official unemployment rate rose from 10 percent to 10.3 percent. During the same period, the official unemployment rate also rose from 5.1 percent to 6.8 percent in Pennsylvania, from 5.7 percent to 7.3 percent in Florida, from 6.9 percent to 7.4 percent in Texas and from 5.2 percent to 5.9 percent in Ohio. The official unemployment rate in California was still 8.6 percent in March 1994, while 12.5 percent of all Black workers in the USA were officially unemployed in March 1994.

12. In April 1994, the official unemployment rate in New York State was 8.2 percent, the official jobless rate in New York City was 9.5 percent and the official jobless rate in California was 9.1 percent. That same month, the official unemployment rate for Hispanic worker was 10.8 percent, while the official jobless rate for Black workers was 11.8 percent in April 1994.

13. Between June 1994 and July 1994, the official jobless rate rose from 8.3 percent to 9 percent in California, from 4.8 percent to 6.3 percent in Illinois, from 5.4 percent to 6 percent in Michigan, and from 6.7 percent to 6.8 percent in Texas. In July 1994, the official jobless rate for Hispanic workers in the USA was 10.1 percent, while the official jobless rate for Black workers was still 11.2 percent.

14. Between September 1994 and October 1994, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 10.7 percent to 11.4 percent, while unemployment also officially jumped in Massachusetts from 5.2 percent to 6.4 percent. During this same period, the official jobless rate in New York City climbed from 7.2 percent to 8.2 percent.

15. In November 1994, the official jobless rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.5 percent.

16. In February 1995, the official jobless rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.1 percent.

17. In May 1995, the official unemployment rate in New York State was 8.2 percent, the official jobless rate in California was 8.5 percent and the New York Times reported in its June 3, 1995 issue that during the first term of the Democratic Clinton Administration “stark evidence of a rapidly slowing economy came in a report that employees dropped 101,000 workers from their payroll in May [1995], the worst decline since the Spring of 1991.” In addition, in May 1995 the official jobless rate for Hispanic workers in the USA was 10 percent and the official jobless rate for Black workers was 9.9 percent.

18. Between May 1995 and June 1995, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 9.9 percent to 10.6 percent. The official jobless rate in New York City in June 1995 was also 8.1 percent.

19. Between July 1995 and September 1995, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 11.1 percent to 11.3 percent.

20. In January 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.5 percent; and, according to the February 3, 1996 issue of the New York Times, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that between December 1995 and January 1996 U.S. “employers dropped 201,000 people from the payrolls.” Coincidentally, the first term Democratic Clinton Administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics then “discontinued publication of the unemployment rates for 11 major industrial states” in its monthly employment situation reports during the 1996 presidential election year, according to the New York Times.

21. In February 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers was 10.3 percent, while the official Hispanic jobless rate was 9.7 percent. A back page of the March 9, 1996 issue of the New York Times also reported that for all U.S. workers the official unemployment rate, based on the “U-6 measure that…includes all those working part-time and those `marginally attached’ to the work force,’ increased from 10.5 percent to 10.7 percent” between February 1995 and February 1996.

22. In June 1996, the official unemployment rate in New York City was 8.5 percent.

23. In April, July, August and September of 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA remained at 10.5 percent. And in its October 5, 1996 issue, the New York Times reported that, nationally, “the job market weakened in September, confirming a slowing of the economy, as payrolls unexpectedly fell by 40,000 and the unemployment rate inched up” with U.S. factories “now employing 331,000 fewer people” than they did in March 1995.

24. Between September 1996 and October 1996, the official jobless rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 10.5 percent to 10.8 percent.

25. In November 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was still 10.6 percent.

26. The official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA in December 1996 of 10.5 percent remained more than double the jobless rate for white workers in the USA. The New York Times also reported in its Jan. 11, 1997 issue that “regionally, the December jobless rate edged up two-tenths of a point, to 6.5 percent in the West…”

And at the end of the first term of the Democratic Clinton Administration in January 1997, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.8 percent, while the official jobless rate in the Northeast United States was 5.8 percent.

So don’t be surprised if full employment is not restored and the official unemployment rate of U.S. workers remains high during the first-term of the Democratic Obama Administration under the existing U.S. corporate welfare-oriented economic system—despite the 2008 presidential campaign rhetoric that “putting a Democrat in the White House” would lead to a reduction in joblessness for U.S. working-class and U.S. middle-class people during the “Great Recession of 2007-2009.”