Labor Secretary Tom Perez presented an impressively rosy — and highly misleading — picture of the jobs situation during President Obama’s tenure in a Labor Day posting on the department’s website.
Perez’s claim that 7.3 million jobs have been created counts only that: jobs created. It doesn’t factor jobs lost during Obama’s administration. It’s sort of like a gamble only counting his winnings and ignoring his losses.
As the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org noted in July, the net jobs creation number under Obama is the considerably smaller figure of 2.27 million.
Even that provides a misleading picture as Washington Post liberal blogger Ezra Klein pointed out on Aug. 1, citing data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The problem is the number of working-age adults with jobs has “barely budged” since 2008:
In short, the jobs picture isn’t getting better — People are just giving up. That’s the reality the labor secretary refuses to acknowledge.
