Net Employment Has Increased Under Obama

The Romney campaign is repeating its claim that Obama has presided over a net job loss. Greg Sargent often claims this metric is not fair because it includes the job losses in progress when Obama entered office, before his policies could take effect, and I agree with that characterization. However, I want to point out that, even if you do look at Romney’s net metric, you will see that employment is now higher than it was on inauguration day:

Thus, Obama has not presided over a net job loss, but a net gain of 152,000 jobs, using Mitt Romney’s logic. Now that number isn’t exactly eye-popping and job growth has been much to slow, but any way you cut it Mitt Romney is lying here. Sargent also highlights this:

In the same release attacking Obama over “net” job loss, the Romney camp also defends Romney’s jobs record as Governor of Massachusetts by pointing out … that Romney inherited a state economy that was losing jobs when he took office.

Seriously.

So, Romney’s campaign wants you to apply the same logic to Mitt Romney as they deny to Obama:

This is precisely the argument that the Romney campaign is implicitly dismissing as bogus when Obama makes it. Indeed, in the very same release, Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul blasts Obama for his “net negative record on job creation,” which is only a “net negative” if you factor in the jobs losses at the start of Obama’s term. But in its own defense, the Romney campaign is arguing for a focus on the jobsadded after the job losses that took place when Romney assumed office.

In other words, if we were to apply to Obama the same standard that the Romney campaign wants applied to itself, Obama has created millions of jobs. (Relatedly, Mike Tomasky tried to apply the same standard to both men’s records, and concluded that if you don’t factor in early job loss for either, Obama’s job growth percentage exceeds Romney’s.)

Exactly right. You could redraw my graph above to start in 2010, and it would look much nicer. But again, Sargent doesn’t note here that, even using Romney’s net metric, job growth is now in the positive.

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