February 1997 Under Bill Cinton
11.3 = Unemployment rate among African-Americans.
8.1 = Unemployment rate among Latinos.
4.5 = Unemployment rate among Whites.
February 2005, Under George W. Bush
10.9 = African-Americans.
6.4 = Latinos.
4.6 = Whites.
This is apples to apples here since it is the same month within the same second term of each persons Presidency. Do you see what I see? Bill Clinton hurts minorities, George W. Bush hurts whites.
HatTip: PoliPundit
You forget to account for total amount of people unemployed, Clinton= 7.2 million, Bush= 8.0 million
But percentagewise is what matters, there are more people now than back than. To compare apples to apples, you need percentage.
flawed logic in your response.. if there were less people in ‘97 a 1.7% drop (for Hispanics) or less than .5% change (in African Americans) is going to result in a similar (if not greater) hard number for 2005… do the math.
Please remember that the unemployment rate only counts people who are still collecting umemployment and looking for a job. This does not include those individuals who have been unable to find a job for an extended period of time. It also neglects the effects of loosing a salary job and picking up a job that pays hourly.
You missed the most important fact: unemployment percentages are only to be used when they show bad news for GOP administrations. If they show good news, then they should be discounted because they miscount or fail to include so many things (which, I presume, they miscount or fail to include in other years as well, unless that is not an issue in non-GOP years?).
AustinGirl172,
I was not referring to hard numbers, I am referring to percentages. Percentages is the true comparison of apples to apples, since it takes into account Hispanic growth over the past time frame (8 years). There will undoubtadly be many more Hispanics today in absolute terms, and compared to other groups (Whites, Blacks, etc) than there was in 1997. Hard numbers value doesn’t take that into account.
Drax,
The links I provided also show that employment population ratio is about the same under both administrations (63.5 for Clinton, 62.3 for Bush). As for your second concern, that it doesn’t take into account loosing a salary job and picking up a job that pays hourly, that is true, but neither did Clintons. Do you have stats that show that situation is worse now than back than? If not, than the point is moot, since it was the same situation under both statistics.
Blogero,
My point exactly. I am not trying to show that the economic situation is necessarily better now, afterall our current economy is post 9/11 and Iraq/Afghanistan war. It is to mainly show the selective process people use to report their economic data and balance out some of the stats floating around.
I like apples and oranges… wait, that’s totally irrelevant.
The question is, what do you like more, apples or oranges.