George W Bush leaves the US presidency on Tuesday with the worst employment growth record of any American leader since World War II, it has emerged.
A new analysis by the American City Business Journal has revealed that America's employment base grew at an annual rate of 0.28 per cent during Bush's eight years as President, by far the slowest pace for any of the 11 postwar presidents.
The previous low had been set by Bush's father, George HW Bush, with an annual job growth rate of 0.59 per cent. The elder Bush served between 1989 and 1993.
Statisticians have based their analysis using adjusted data from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics -- in fact, they calculated the employment growth rates for administrations of all presidents since wartime leader Harry Truman.
The administration with the strongest job growth rate since the Second World War was that of Lyndon Johnson, who had served between November 1963 and January 1969. Jobs increased at an annual pace of 3.74 per cent during that period.
Bush's span ran from December 2000, when nonfarm employment totalled 132.5 million, to December 2008, when it reached 135.5 million, the Silicon Valley/ San Jose Business Journal reported.
The analysis also looked at five subsets of job growth, with the younger President Bush finishing last in four of those categories -- private-sector, manufacturing, retail-trade and government employment.
The exception was construction employment, where Bush ranked ninth with an annual growth rate of 0.08 per cent. Johnson was the top-rated president in all three subsets while Truman, who was the president from 1945 to 1953, led the other two -- construction and retail-trade employment.
