Where Are Those 4 Million Jobs, Mr. President?

In almost every campaign speech, Barack Obama continues to claim that he's created 4.3 million jobs since he's been in office.  But, here's the thing: Where's the "official" top-line, government number that supports that claim?

Logic would tell you that the first place you would look to see a creation of 4.3 million jobs would be in a reduction of the number of jobless workers since Obama became President.  But, according to Obama's own U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of unemployed workers has actually grown by 1.1 million; rising from 11.6 million job seekers in January 2009 to 12.7 million in last month's employment report.

So, then, if we can't see Obama's job creation number in the number of unemployed workers,  the only other place to find Obama's jobs number would be in an increase in the size of this nation's workforce. But, always keep in mind that  a workforce should naturally grow each year to accommodate all the new workers who would be entering the job market after exiting school.  Of course, this number would have to be net of any retirees who would be leaving the workforce at the same time.  For the United States, that net job growth number would be about 1% or 1.54 million new workers per year on a base of 154.2 million workers in the labor force when Obama took office.  Now here's the problem.  The workforce has only gown by 800,000 workers in the last 27 months.  Not enough to even cover the growth in the number of unemployed workers during that period; let alone, enough to cover Obama's supposed job creation record.


The fact is that nowhere -- except out of the mouth of this President -- can anyone really find those 4.3 million jobs. Even if the policies of this President did create that many jobs,  the top-line numbers would then "have to" suggest that for every "one job" being created, "two jobs" had to have been destroyed in the process.  And, probably, that's the real record of an Obama presidency.