Reagan put a hiring freeze on federal employees the day he took office and was actually shrinking the number of bureaucrats in Washington.
Far cry from other administration, especially the current one, where, in "the severest recession since the depression," the unemployment rate in Washington D.C. is about the lowest in the country.
Problem is the hiring freeze didn't last long.
Over his Presidency, the number of federal employees increased by 2.8%.
Contrast that to Clinton who actually reduced federal payrolls.
Trend of Federal Civilian Employment by Year
The Adventures of My Pet Hamster ? The Hypothesis of “Big Government”
And Reagan was no fiscal conservative:
The Myths of Reaganomics - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Institute
As for Obama, he has proposed the smallest federal pay increase since 1975 and has instructed all department secretaries to cut spending and, guess what, all have.
The "record number of federal employees" under Obama is largely speculation based on where certain people with an agenda think the end result of the stimulus will land us. They won't tell you that the stimulus is a temporary measure that will be all used up by December and will have no impact on where federal employment under Obama ends up.
The stimulus did not hire a bunch of new federal employees. Rather, it saved some already existing jobs(local, state and federal government). Most of the stimulus has been contracted out to private companies. The people conducting stimulus funded medical research, building solar panels and lithium batteries and re paving your street with stimulus money do not work for President Obama. They work for whatever private company got the money.
As for this thread, how could a certain original poster be comparing unemployment by Presidencies and putting Obama last when the rest of the people had full terms and Obama is not even half way through his first?
Mark my words, Obama will not be leaving office with a higher unemployment rate than he started out with.
2009 and 2010 were very tough years, and still, we lost less jobs every month and growth returned in 3rd quarter 2009. That is unheard of for a recession this severe to turn around to recovery as quickly as it did. We are now creating jobs and the unemployment rate is on its way down. It was higher in 2009 and higher in 1982/3 than it is now.
The premise of this thread is that Obama somehow, if he had the right policies, would have unemployment at 5% right now. That is economically impossible given what he started out with, wouldn't matter if he was the market's equivalent of Jesus on water.
