CNN Fact Check: About those 4.5 million jobs ...

The facts:

The number Castro cites is an accurate description of the growth of private-sector jobs since January 2010, when the long, steep slide in employment finally hit bottom. But while a total of 4.5 million jobs sounds great, it's not the whole picture.
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Nonfarm private payrolls hit a post-recession low of 106.8 million that month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figure currently stands at 111.3 million as of July.

While that is indeed a gain of 4.5 million, it's only a net gain of 300,000 over the course of the Obama administration to date. The private jobs figure stood at 111 million in January 2009, the month Obama took office.

And total nonfarm payrolls, including government workers, are down from 133.6 million workers at the beginning of 2009 to 133.2 million in July 2012. There's been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.

Meanwhile, the jobs that have come back aren't the same ones that were lost....

...there are still fewer people working now than when Obama took office at the height of the recession.


http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/politics/fact-check-obama-jobs/index.html

 

The Democrats launched their convention with a series of speeches that put the best possible gloss on the president’s economic record and took various shots at GOP nominee Mitt Romney. First Lady Michelle Obama, who like Ann Romney gave a mostly personal testimonial about her husband, did not give us much material to fact-check. But here’s a round-up of other notable claims Tuesday evening.

“Four years ago, America stood on the brink of a depression. Despite incredible odds and united Republican opposition, our president took action. And now we’ve seen 4.5 million new jobs.”

— San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, in the keynote address

Castro takes a debatable talking point from the Obama campaign — that 4.5 million private sector jobs have been created since February 2010 (a year after the president’s stimulus bill was passed into law) — and makes it ridiculous.

First, this statistic only includes private sector jobs, which means the decline in government jobs is simply excluded. Total jobs created in the United States from February 2010 is 4 million — and it is actually still negative if you start counting from the beginning of Obama’s presidency.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job creation in Obama’s entire presidency is either minus 300,000 or plus 160,000, depending on whether you date his presidency from January or February. (NOTE: This is an corrected figure from an early-morning post.)

Second, February 2010 is a cherry-picked month that puts Obama’s job creation record in the best possible light. The end of the recession, June 2009, would be a more logical date from which to start counting jobs created; that would reduce the total to 3.4 million (for private sector jobs) or 2.7 million (for all jobs).

Finally, the U.S. population keeps growing, meaning the economy has to keep creating more than 100,000 jobs each month just to keep pace. By that measure, Obama is in a hole no matter when you start counting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...3d-11e1-8b93-c4f4ab1c8d13_blog.html#pagebreak