Bush’s Former Chief Economic Adviser: 'Lower Proportion of Americans Are Working Today Than When Obama Took Office'

November 2nd, 2012 4:55 PM

On the Nov. 2 edition of CNBCs “Squawk on the Street,” former chief economic advisor to George W. Bush and Hoover Fellow Ed Lazear commented that today’s jobs report may not be as good as the Obama administration and media make it out to be. “You have to think about how much do you need to keep employment constant as a proportion of the population,” he stated.

Lazear went on to explain that the private sector just isn’t creating enough jobs to completely recover the jobs lost any time soon. “It would take actually 13 years to make up for the jobs lost in the current recession and still keep up with the population.”

Finally, Lazear said something the media had been ignoring – that there aren’t as many people working today as when Obama took office in 2009. “The employment population ratio has fallen two percentage points since the beginning, so a lower proportion of Americans are working today than were working when he took office.”