By Hugh Griffin-Banerjee and Miranda Park

Years ago, we emailed a good friend a set of data comparing Republican and Democratic economic performance since the Carter years. Our friend, a committed Republican, wasn’t fond of the results. He sent a reply that read, “I think I can tell when someone’s cherry-picked the data.”

For the record, we of The Near-Cana Gazette let the numbers speak for themselves, but we’ve been on the lookout ever since for simple, straightforward metrics that shed a brighter light on the GOP’s economy-management expertise. As luck would have it, Miranda stumbled across a Wikipedia piece titled, “Jobs Created during US Presidential Terms.” The article covers a great deal of ground, but one section in particular caught our eye: a chart showing average annual non-farm job growth per presidential term.

We couldn’t resist the temptation. We had to know whether the results would correlate with the conclusions we published in “GOP v. Democrats, Part III: Jobs.” In our minds, we thought there was a teensy chance that the Republicans would win this time, even though they were drubbed when the yardstick was unemployment.

According to Wikipedia, the annual Rate of non-farm job growth per presidential term since 1977 but prior to th=was as follows:

On average, the annual rate of non-farm job growth during the five Republican terms before the Trump Reign of Error was a shade less than 1%. Over the same period, the average annual rate of non-farm job growth was a shade more than 2% during Democratic administrations.

The usual quibbles apply. Our favorite: The newly elected president’s policies take a year or so to have an impact on the market. Our opinion: That’s true to an extent, but the latency varies and is largely subjective, which makes it impossible to measure. Our second favorite: The president is a tool of Congress. They make the rules; he (or she eventually) breaks them. Our opinion: The policies that affect job growth are generally determined by the president and then watered down by a detached, misinformed Congress.

The (empirical) job-growth bottom line: Republicans 1%, Democrats 2%.

To date, we’ve used four nonpartisan, easy-to-understand metrics to compare the health and welfare of the US economy under Republican and Democratic presidents from 1977 to 2017. The result: Democrats 4, Republicans 0.

We’re not giving up. Sooner or later, we’re bound to encounter a barometer of economic performance that favors GOP presidents and doesn’t antedate the invention of the pocket calculator. In the meantime, we’ll look forward to another nasty-gram from the American Association for the Advancement of Innumeracy. You can support their cause by sending donations to their parent company: Fox News.

Update: According to data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2.19 million jobs were created in 2017, Trump’s first year in office and a splendid result by any measure. In contrast, 2.34 million jobs were created during President Obama’s last year in office, or about 7% more than Trump’s first. Sadly, three million jobs were lost during the entirety of the Trump Reign of Error. As before, we’d give The Donald some slack because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but he and his cronies so cocked up the management of it that we’re disinclined to do so.