Dean Baker is, of course, right: this is not a boom, and comparisons to the 1990s are insane. Still, growth has clearly picked up, and the public seems to be noticing. So what can we say about the Obama non-boom?
I’d argue that much of what we’re seeing reflects the tapering off of austerity. The US has never had a proclaimed austerity plan, UK style, but we’ve had a lot of the thing itself, especially from cutbacks in state and local spending. Spending hasn’t rebounded yet, but at least it has stopped shrinking:
And it’s important to realize that, despite all the rhetoric about how Obamacare/antibusiness rhetoric/Kenyan Islamic atheism is destroying business, the private sector has actually been relatively strong under Obama. Here’s employment:
Since Obama took office, we’ve gained 6.7 million private-sector jobs, compared with just 3.1 million at the same point under Bush. But under Bush we’d added 1.2 million public sector jobs, while under Obama we’ve cut 600,000. The point is that relatively good private sector performance has been masked by public-sector cutbacks; this is the opposite of what you usually hear, but that’s no surprise.
What about the prospects looking forward? As I’ve pointed out before, business investment has been relatively strong throughout. Residential investment, however, has been very low since 2006, suggesting that there’s a backlog of pent-up demand, which should come into play in an improving job market. So that’s one source of strength. Also, low oil prices are going to be mostly positive, although with some adverse regional effects; more on that in a later post.
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