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Anyone watching the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night heard the number 4.5 million several times.

"Despite incredible odds and united Republican opposition, our president took action, and now we've seen 4.5 million new jobs," San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, the party's keynote speaker, said.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as President Barack Obama's chief of staff, and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who followed Obama's November rival Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts, both cited the same number.

It's a big-sounding number, given the still-sputtering job market. So we're giving it a close eyeballing.

The facts:

The number Castro cites is an accurate description of the growth of private-sector jobs since January 2010, when the long, steep slide in employment finally hit bottom. But while a total of 4.5 million jobs sounds great, it's not the whole picture.

Nonfarm private payrolls hit a post-recession low of 106.8 million that month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figure currently stands at 111.3 million as of July.

While that is indeed a gain of 4.5 million, it's only a net gain of 300,000 over the course of the Obama administration to date. The private jobs figure stood at 111 million in January 2009, the month Obama took office.

And total nonfarm payrolls, including government workers, are down from 133.6 million workers at the beginning of 2009 to 133.2 million in July 2012. There's been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.

Meanwhile, the jobs that have come back aren't the same ones that were lost.

According to a study released last week by the liberal-leaning National Employment Law Project, low-wage fields such as retail sales and food service are adding jobs nearly three times as fast as higher-paid occupations.

Conclusion:

The figure of 4.5 million jobs is accurate if you look at the most favorable period and category for the administration. But overall, there are still fewer people working now than when Obama took office at the height of the recession. http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/politics/fact-check-obama-jobs/index.htm
l?hpt=hp_t2 my opinion, their "fact check" fails...as the author himself admits three times. To go beyond that and look at jobs lost, etc., isn't to "fact check" the statement, it's to give information behind the statement and show that there's more to it. Certainly valid, but not a "fact check".

The author explains that it's more complicated than what's been claimed, but stops reviewing the complexity short of the realities. The loss of public-sector jobs is happening mostly in the states, and by Republicans pushing for "smaller government":

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Public sector job loss is at the heart of our stagnant economy and is a big reason why the recovery can’t get real lift-off. Yet this isn’t a coincidental phenomenon or a bipartisan issue. Republican lawmakers are to blame for the bulk of these job losses, and their solutions to the problem will only add fuel to the fire.

From Obama’s point of view, we’re not being dragged down by job loss in the private sector but by losses in the public sector. Romney sees exactly the opposite: we should cut even more jobs in the government and invest more heavily in private sector job creators. (He even explicitly called for government job cuts just a week ago.) http://www.thenation.com/blog/168313/romneys-all-wrong-public-sector-e
mployment

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(If you want to bitch about it being The Nation, I can find the same things elsewhere easily.)

Also, when one loses a government job because that job was eliminated, most people HAVE to take lower-paying jobs to survive, so of course jobs paying less end up with a glut of potential employees.

As to there being fewer people working now than when Obama took office, I don't know how they equate that with the statement. They didn't say there weren't, they never said we're hunky-dory, they were pointing out that the administration has done what it could to improve the situation.

So I find their "fact check" to be erroneous in that their conclusion doesn't actually "check the facts" of the statement...it goes beyond that to say the statement, WHILE ACCURATE, is misleading. Perhaps it is, but their reasons for it being misleading indicate it's more complex than just the statement, but stop short of the reasons why their fact check itself is misleading.

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it's just not as impressive as it sounds

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