Obama's job record

I really can't state it better then Investor's Business Daily did in an editorial:

The White House, during its convention, repeatedly claimed to have "created" 4.5 million jobs. Leaving aside the fact that businesses, not government, create jobs, it's still factually incorrect.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, payroll jobs in August totaled 133.3 million. The month Obama entered office, there were 133.561 million. So the number of jobs has shrunk.

Rewinding to previous State Of The Union Speeches

‎Before the State Of The Union Address, I thought it was relevant to look backwards at Barack's previous State Of The Union Addresses, at the statements made...

2009:

"Now is the time to jump-start job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that is what I'd like to talk to you about tonight."

2010:

"Now, if we had taken office in ordinary times, I would have liked nothing more than to start bringing down the deficit. But we took office amid a crisis. And our efforts to prevent a second depression have added another $1 trillion to our national debt. That, too, is a fact.
I'm absolutely convinced that was the right thing to do."

2011:

"We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. (Applause.) We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our government. That’s how our people will prosper. That’s how we’ll win the future. (Applause.) And tonight, I’d like to talk about how we get there."

"Pass This Bill"; Obama... and jobs

I ran across two videos today that are worth their weight in gold; mainly for the work that went into them.

My first nod goes to the Huffington Post.
Yes, you read that right... the Huffington Post.
Some editor must have spent a week in the editing suite putting together this representation of the president telling us that he was focused on jobs... since 2009:

The second one is the president telling us to "pass this bill", 90 times in 5 speeches over 1 week.
Politico deserves a Pulitzer for this one.

Oh Good. The president is going to do something about jobs. Again.

If a mechanic kept promising to repair your car, and kept messing it up, would you keep paying?

In 2009, Barack promised to create jobs and reduce the deficit, in an address to congress:

Now is the time to act boldly and wisely -- to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that is what I'd like to talk to you about tonight.

Then he promised to attack jobs in 2010.

Now, as we stabilized the financial system, we also took steps to get our economy growing again, save as many jobs as possible, and help Americans who had become unemployed.

Wait... maybe we can get him saying that he won't rest until he gets us a job?

Oh.

Look, its 2011. We don't need more promises/ plans/ from the guy who spent $787 Billion and couldn't keep unemployment under the 8%.

At some point in time, do you stop listening to the mechanic who keeps promising to fix your car?

Or are you different?

Do you give your keys to the mechanic, again, pay again, and presume that this time... he's going to get it right?

If the Huffpost didn't leave out facts, they wouldn't print anything

So an acquaintance linked me to this Huffington Post article:

"If the economy produces jobs over the next eight months at the same pace as it did over the past four months, the nation will have created more jobs in 2010 alone than it did over the entire eight years of George W. Bush's presidency."

Something sounded strange about that... so I followed the link to the National Journal, where the article came from:

More jobs might be created this year than during George W. Bush's presidency.

It sounded suspicious to me. So I read the article looking for the magic words "census jobs". The article does not mention them.
That made me curious as to what the job report (listed in the article above) actually said:

Job gains occurred in manufacturing, professional and business services, health care, and leisure and hospitality. Federal government employment also rose, reflecting continued hiring
of temporary workers for Census 2010.

Hmmm. Sounds like the Census is creating a lot of that job surge. Just as I thought.
But I wasn't satisfied with that. Because my friend's friends tried to suggest that Census workers weren't included in the job numbers.
The following is from a PDF that the commerce department sent out in February of 2010:

According to Census Bureau operational plans, the number of hires for temporary 2010 Census jobs is estimated to be about 800,000 during April and May of this year. For several techincal reasons, including the very short term tenure of these jobs, the number of 2010 Census hires will not be fully reflected in either the monthly levels or changes in non-farm employment
reported by the BLS. Based on the experience in the 2000 census, the BLS figures may show the number of temporary census jobs peaking at a level closer to 635,000 in May.

Read that paragraph again. It suggest that a whole lot of jobs might be temporarily created in May. And then the level of jobs will go down again.
Now I just happened to find out recently that the Census kind of, you know, over-hired this year. Which means that they are not only done hiring, but they are trying to figure out what to do with all of their staff.
Which means that in the next two months, we might see another surge of unemployed folks out there. I presume then that the Huffington Post will notice the Census jobs.