"The bottom line is: Almost all of the job gains under President Obama have been in so-called service jobs, such as those in Silicon Valley and consulting. Others are the low-end jobs, toiling in stores and restaurants."
Almost all of the jobs gained were McJobs, service jobs, and retail.
https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/04/news/economy/jobs-under-obama/
From what I saw back in Jersey, much of the IT jobs were filled by H1B visa employees.
Hey! I got two dumbs. Fantastic. Let's not forget the part-time jobs Obamacare created.
The low end jobs were all that there were at that time. People were losing jobs and retirements and homes at record rates.
I'll give Obama credit for at least realizing that we needed 'jobs' at that time.
Had the Republican's at least tried to work with him maybe things would have been different.
At any rate without those service jobs we wouldn't have grown to need any other industry (it takes money stimulus) to create any sort of saleable product, even without any help from the right Obama pulled it off.
I'm hardly praising him for the economy he created (it cost us trillions) but the end result is obvious.
Trump's result is obvious too. We'll be in an even worse Recession/Depression than the one Obama was, with the added benefit of dirty water and dirty air thanks to his archaic fossil fuel policies and with the EPA rules in general.
You say the IT jobs were filled by H1B visa employees in Jersey and you're right. They were mostly Asian of Indian persuasion coming here for a better wage.
It's ironic because they were better educated than most of our home grown IT people. But not all of our IT people were 'lower' educated.
The irony is that our smarter IT people were being recruited by China at that time; my son-in-law who is 28 years-old now is in IT Security and at that time he was offered a full boat Scholarship to Tsinghua University - Beijing.
He did a 1 year stint there for the good pay they offered, but came back because home is where the heart is or something like that.
I guess my point is that like it or not we live in a Global Economy and no amount of fossil fuel will change that.