This map, depicting job growth in metropolitan areas, makes an unpopular but hard-to-refute point: The job-creation record of the Bush administration was pretty darn good from January 2004 to mid-2008, with two glaring exceptions — New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and Michigan (thanks, Governor Granholm).
Obviously, mid-2008 was when you started seeing massive job losses across the country. And the job losses in major metropolitan areas since the beginning of 2009 have been on par with Hurricane Katrina’s impact on employment in New Orleans.