Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy has created the above chart tracking net job creation by presidential terms since 1945.
The short version: The 21st century really sucks so far. Slightly longer version: Obama and Bush fils are the worst of the bunch.
As de Rugy notes at National Review's The Corner:
  • Since President Obama took office, fewer jobs were created than were lost. Actually, some 300,000 fewer Americans are employed then when the president took office. That’s mainly because a large number of jobs were lost during 2009 and the so-called recovery is the slowest one of all time, with very meek monthly job creation and weak economic growth.
  • It would take Obama roughly 280,000 new jobs per month for every month from now until January 2013 to get him out of last place.
  • While it would be unfair to compare Obama with Clinton, this chart shows that at this point President Obama’s job numbers are far worse than Presidents Carter, Kennedy, and Ford, who were in office almost as long or served much shorter periods than he has
De Rugy also points to work by her Mercatus colleague Keith Hall, whose chart on the employment-to-population ratio helps illustrate just how rotten this so-called recovery really is.