Job growth: 75 months of gains

02 obama economy jobs

Overall, President Obama has presided over 75 straight months of job gains, a record.

It's a remarkable period, given that when he took office, the U.S. was losing about 800,000 jobs a month. Congress and Obama passed stimulus measures and tax cuts to encourage companies to hire again. The Federal Reserve also took extraordinary measures to fix the economy.

Hiring did pick up...slowly. It took until May 2014 for the U.S. to finally gain back all the 8.7 million jobs lost during the downturn.

But employment has surged since then: 2014 and 2015 were the strongest years for job growth in America since 1999.

First published January 6, 2017: 11:46 AM ET

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