And the 3.1-percentage-point decline in joblessness over President Obama’s eight years ties with Mr. Clinton for the steepest drop during a presidency in the post-World War II era.

Labor Force Participation: Not Just an Obama-Era Story

Looking only at the unemployment rate, especially at the tail end of the administration, may be too generous to the Obama record. That rate only counts people who are actively seeking work. And one of the big stories of the last several years has been a contraction in the share of Americans who even count themselves as part of the labor force.

But how to measure that? One way is to look at the share of the adult population that is working, or counts itself as part of the labor force. But if you do that, you fail to account for people who are not in the labor force for completely sensible reasons — because they are voluntarily retiring, or going to graduate school, and so on.

That’s why economists often look at “prime-age” labor force participation, only the share of people between ages of 25 and 54 who are either working or seeking work.

But here also, it is tricky to compare shifts in recent years with earlier decades, when women were entering the work force at high rates. That shift, which took place roughly from the 1960s through 2000, fueled a boom in the rate of labor force participation that hasn’t continued in the last 16 years partly because most of the women who want to be part of the labor force already are.

But what if we look just at the labor force participation rate among prime-aged men? How do the Obama years stack up?

It’s pretty bad. The proportion of men 25 to 54 who are part of the labor force has fallen by 1.4 percentage points during the last eight years.