Here is why Obama deserves no credit for the recovery

Wall Street Journal:

Seven years after the recession began, only one in 50 U.S. counties has fully bounced back, according to a study the National Association of Counties released Monday.

The 2014 County Economic Tracker shows that 65 of the nation’s 3,069 counties have met or surpassed prerecession levels in four measured categories: jobs, unemployment rate, economic output and home prices.

Those places range from Anderson County, S.C., to McKenzie County, N.D., to Kodiak Island, Alaska.

National employment surpassed 2007 levels during 2014 and the U.S. gross domestic product had fully recovered from the recession by 2011. But the national unemployment rate was 5.6% in December compared with 5% when the recession began seven years earlier. And housing values in much of the country have yet to fully return.

The recovered counties are largely located in energy-rich areas and have small populations. Of the 65 recovered counties, 24 are in Texas and 16 are in North Dakota. The others are generally in the middle of the country, including nine in Minnesota and eight in Kansas.

None of the recovered counties has more than 500,000 residents.
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What is not mentioned is that because of the decline in the price of oil, layoff are already happening in the areas that have seen the most growth.  The rig count is down and the service industry is laying off thousands.  Wall Street is also laying off thousands.  The numbers on the effects of these layoffs are not yet in the calculations but they should show up in the first quarter results.  You have 40 counties in the oil patch.  Some of business in other counties is also related to the oil business.