Obama's statement he created 5 mil jobs over last 30 mo's 'half true' - Politifact: half reasonable
Politifact's Louis Jacobson gave Obama a half true judgement on his statement that his administration has created 5 million jobs in the last 30 months. Jacobson says Obama is cherry -picking his start date. But one of his numbers - which Jacobson uses to establish a range of purportedly reasonable estimates - is based on a start date of January 2009, the month Obama walked into the White House and the start date Mr. Rmoney uses in saying Obama administration created only 514,000 jobs.
Now, let's be sensible here, who in his right mind would contend that a new President, within days of his enterring the White House can have an affect on the economy. It takes months just to get a bill passed let alone actually allocate government funds to enact said legislation. That Jacobson would even give an estimate based on a start date of Jan 2009 any credence, clearly establishes his analysis as NOT CREDIBLE.
Jacobsen offers as the other end of the range of start dates that of June 2009, based on the rather hackneyed notion that two quarters of declining GDP marks the beginning of a recesssion and two quarters of rising GDP means the end of a recession. But there are several ways of measuring the beginning and end of a recession , one of which is the ol' two quarters rule. But none of them holds sway over any of the others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession
Another measure some economist prefer to the 'two quarters' rule is - a 1.5% rise in unemployment within 12 months - AS indicateing a recession. Now, does that mean when you see a change in unemployment LESS THAN a rise of 1.5% over the preceding 12 months you are out of recession? ..(or should it be a period of decreases in the unemployment rate?) I don't know, BUT IF you use a 12 month period with the unemployment rate increasing LESS THAN 1.5%, by that definition, the end of the Great Recession came in March of 2010 - or just about where Obama started his measurement of his administration's jobs creation number.
Jacobsen also took time and space to add that by using the private sector job creation number Obama was making his job creation numbers look better: "Private-sector job numbers ... paint a more favorable picture for the president than total job numbers do, since government jobs have been shrinking in recent years.". And why have Government jobs been shrinking?? Because the GOP have demanded cuts to Government programs as the price to preclude a Government shut-down and a Government default on its debt. This was not Obama's doing, unless Jacobson wants to say Obama told the GOP to threaten a Government shutdown and default so as to sabotage the recovery. If Jacobson wants to bring up the reduction in Government jobs he should also point out who is responsible for that decline - it wasn't President Obama. Cuts in Government programs have hurt the recovery. (the Wall Street Journal noted in an article that the unemployment rate would be a full percentage point lower were it not for cuts to Government programs -Unemployment rate without Government cuts: 7.1%).
All in all, Jacobson's analysis is suspect and I find Obama's characterization of his job creation numbers more credible than Jacobson's. I give Jacobson's analysis a [font style="color:red"]SUSPECT OF BIAS [/font]rating.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/17/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-his-administration-has-created-5/
If you start at the low point in the private-sector job market -- February 2010, which is 31 months ago -- then Obama has presided over the net creation of 4.7 million jobs.
But that means starting the count more than a year after Obama took office, which -- a little too conveniently for the president -- removes all of the job losses from his first year off his ledger.
Another way of doing it would be to start with January 2009, when Obama was sworn in. By this count, the nation has gained a net 514,000 private-sector jobs -- an amount only one-tenth the size of what Obama claimed. However, this method has its drawbacks, because no president can have much impact in the first few months on the job.
A middle-ground position is to start the count at the official beginning of the recovery, which came in June 2009. From June 2009 until today, the nation has gained roughly 3.6 million private-sector jobs. That’s less than Obama claims, but more than the inauguration-day calculation the Romney camp often prefers.
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