During my rounds today, I saw some Republican graphic attributing a 2 million job lost to Obama {Update 9PM-here's the source, a Brent Bozell outfit called For America that a friend liked on Facebook}. Not by the numbers we usually use.
The classic stat is for non-farm payrolls. That was at 133.561 million on 1/1/2009 and 132.837 on 2/1/2009. A quick extrapolation of 2/3rd of the 2/1 and 1/3rd of the 1/1 to represent the January 20th inaugural gives us 133.078.
The most recent figure in the St. Louis Fed's spreadsheet is July 1st, which is in at 133.245. That's up a tad from our composite figure from inauguration day.
If we go with January, we're down about 300K. If we go with our composite, we're up 267k. Either way, it's background noise away from break-even.
The old "are you better off than you were four years ago" is a near-wash. The operative question is which of the candiates will help the country (or you, if you're self-centered) be better off four years from now.
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