Obama's Disingenuous 10 Million Job Creation Claim

At a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation event last week, Barack Obama took credit for creating 10 million new jobs in the last 54 months.  Of course, what he didn't tell this African-American group is that blacks got very few of those 10 million jobs.  That's because, in 2009, when he took office, black unemployment was 12.6%.  Today, it has only mildly decreased to  11.4%; or, only a 9.5% improvement. On the other hand, white unemployment now stands at 5.3% after having been at 6.9% when Obama took office; a 23% reduction in that unemployment rate.

Nor, did he mention that before creating 10 million jobs, 4.3 million where lost.  Something that was never supposed to happen with the passage of his near trillion dollar stimulus package.  Nor, did he own up to the fact that in most of those 54 months, there was only job creation because workers stopped looking for work.  For example, last month saw a job growth of 142,000.  At the same time,  268,000 able-bodied workers just gave up looking.  If those 268,000 workers, when polled, had said they were still looking for work, they would had been counted as part of the workforce and, as a result,  there would have been a reported loss of 126,000 jobs instead of the reported gain.  Today, the real unemployment rate, when adding in those workers who have given up, is 12%.  That means that there are 9.3 million workers who are sitting home when they could actually be working.  A number almost equal to the number of jobs that Obama claims to have created.

Lastly, half of all the jobs created by the President have been low paying.  That's why median incomes continue to be lower than they were when he took office:

References:

Obama proudly announces 10m jobs created since he was elected - but he forgot to mention the 4.3m lost along the way: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2772360/Obama-proudly-announces-10m-jobs-created-elected-forgot-mention-4-3m-lost-way.html

Employment Report January 2009: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_02062009.htm

August 2014 Employment Report: Table A-2. Employment status of the civilian population by race, sex, and age: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm

Alternative Measures of Unemployment: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

 Half Of All Jobs Created In The Past 3 Years Were Low-Paying: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/low-paying-jobs_n_3266737.html

Real Median Household Incomes: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgrEZN56FgagV7kK68-FbuUtVMNcdA4gJRlDCQe8MJhfpK4tstbMzL2ydC17Kgf6WaU2UNvvI-LiAPsh0L4XT8h3z5bsTUjMBtlbmkUILa1Kic3fRovz9hhoSH4VWhwG_8GJHniP5yo9k/s1600/RealHousehold2013.PNG

Source of Graph: Census: Poverty Rate declined in 2013, Real Median Income increased slightly: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2014/09/census-poverty-rate-declined-in-2013.html