Whose Jobs?

Obama's progressive fanboys and fangirls, desperately shouting themselves hoarse in the vain effort to paint their hero as an economic champion, resort to tricks, superficial data gathering, and have even pointed out how great Wall Street is doing!

Meanwhile, Main Street limps along, lined now with big conglomerate banks that have the lawyers, tax cheats, financial sorcerers and government connections to overcome the tons of toxic bureaucratic sludge dumped on them after Bush's gang crashed the economy in 2008.  Many local banks were sucked under in the DC mudslide or were bought out by the big guys.

The economy is recovering, but the Obama presidency has seen the weakest economic recovery ever in the nation's history.  He has also presided over the most anemic jobs recovery ever, squeaking out a bare 5 million or so net new jobs in his six years as president, for a net total of 1.2 million new jobs since December 2007, the high water mark for jobs before the Great Recession.  If you think Obama's job growth sounds good, consider we added over 12 million people to our population in that timeframe. 

If the numbers confuse you, here is a quick chart based upon US government statistics.  Essentially, Bush bled out jobs in 2008, and the trend didn't reverse until well into Obama's first term, where only statistical trickery kept him from being a net job loss president.

Year         Workforce Size
Dec 2007 ... 146,273,000
Jan 2009 ... 142,152,000
Jan 2013 ... 143,328,000
Dec 2014 ... 147,442,000

Who created those jobs?
Economics professor and AEI scholar Mark J. Perry makes a bold statement:

Job creation in just one state – Texas – is solely responsible for the 1.169 million net increase in total US employment (+1,444,290 Texas jobs minus the 275,290 non-Texas job loss) in the seven year period between the start of the Great Recession in December 2007 and December 2014.

The other 49 states and the District of Columbia together employ about 275,000 fewer Americans than at the start of the recession seven years ago, while the Lone Star State has added more than 1.25 million payroll jobs and more than 190,000 non-payroll jobs (primarily self-employed and farm workers).  (Texas Job Growth)

He produced this chart to illustrate his point:

Immigrants Got the Jobs
The good folks at Center for Immigration Studies point out that all net job growth went to immigrants:

The BLS reports that 23.1 million adult (16-plus) immigrants (legal and illegal) were working in November 2007 and 25.1 million were working in November of this year — a two million increase.

For natives,124.01 million were working in November 2007 compared 122.56 million in November 2014 — a 1.46 million decrease.  (Employment Growth has gone to Immigrants)

These are tip of the iceberg numbers.  There was a lot of gross job destruction and creation between 2007 and now.

My question is, does any of this matter?  Could the average citizen understand it and put it into context that matters to their lives?

Additional Resources:
A Brief History of US Unemployment
Interactive Unemployment Rate Finder
Jobs Created by Presidential Term