Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The chart below shows net job growth every month since 2008. Why net? Because the U.S. population increases every month, which means you need a certain number of new jobs just to tread water. This chart subtracts that out to show the true net growth in employment.

I’ve run this chart before, but there are a couple of changes this time. First, per Dean Baker, I’m now using 90,000 as the number of jobs needed to keep pace with population growth. Second, I finally got off my ass and automated the whole thing on FRED instead of redrawing it every time I do this. You can link to it here and juggle the numbers yourself if you feel like it.

Bottom line: the number of net new jobs added in November was about 30,000. That’s better than zero, but not a lot better.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate