Hoover
The unemployment rate in 1933 was 25 percent. It's 5.5 percent now. I don't think we're talking the same ballpark.
The unemployment rate has been steadily dropping for over a year, 8 points since June of 2003. Obviously, by sheer mathematics, job growth is overtaking population growth.
If you're going to talk percentage of population instead of raw positive or negative numbers, then by all means, let's do so.
You might be better off going to the plan B you all had back when jobs were going up by 300,000 a month: that they were all "bad" jobs.