Cebu_4_2
21st January 2015, 08:23 AM
Obama: Since 2010, U.S. has created more jobs than 'all advanced economies combined'
By Lauren Carroll (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/staff/lauren-carroll/) on Wednesday, January 21st, 2015 at 12:42 a.m.
http://static.politifact.com.s3.amazonaws.com:80/politifact%2Fphotos%2Fobama_sotu_2_final.jpg
President Barack Obama delivers his sixth State of the Union address Jan. 20, 2015 (Photo credit: New York Times) Positive economic indicators were a major piece of President Barack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address, including a claim he repeated throughout 2014: that the American economy has outperformed the economies of other advanced countries.
In talking about his goals for the upcoming year, Obama said, "As we better train our workers, we need the new economy to keep churning out high-wage jobs for our workers to fill. Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan and all advanced economies combined."
We previously rated a similar statement by Obama, giving him a Half True (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/nov/09/barack-obama/obama-2009-us-has-created-more-jobs-every-other-ad/) for the claim that "we've created more jobs in the United States than every other advanced economy combined since I came into office." His numbers at the time were off, and it seemed like the other economies were ever so slightly edging out the United States for total jobs created.
A few months later, we’re able to update this fact-check with more recent data. The new information actually lines up better with Obama’s claim. But there are still problems with the idea that people are being put back to work.
How does the U.S. compare to the other advanced economies?
For this fact-check, we’ll use International Monetary Fund data (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2014/01/weodata/index.aspx). The IMF classifies 36 countries as "advanced economies" and seven of those as "major advanced economies." We looked at total average annual employment from 2010 through 2015. (This counts the number of payroll positions, meaning one person who works two jobs would be counted twice.)
By Lauren Carroll (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/staff/lauren-carroll/) on Wednesday, January 21st, 2015 at 12:42 a.m.
http://static.politifact.com.s3.amazonaws.com:80/politifact%2Fphotos%2Fobama_sotu_2_final.jpg
President Barack Obama delivers his sixth State of the Union address Jan. 20, 2015 (Photo credit: New York Times) Positive economic indicators were a major piece of President Barack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address, including a claim he repeated throughout 2014: that the American economy has outperformed the economies of other advanced countries.
In talking about his goals for the upcoming year, Obama said, "As we better train our workers, we need the new economy to keep churning out high-wage jobs for our workers to fill. Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan and all advanced economies combined."
We previously rated a similar statement by Obama, giving him a Half True (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/nov/09/barack-obama/obama-2009-us-has-created-more-jobs-every-other-ad/) for the claim that "we've created more jobs in the United States than every other advanced economy combined since I came into office." His numbers at the time were off, and it seemed like the other economies were ever so slightly edging out the United States for total jobs created.
A few months later, we’re able to update this fact-check with more recent data. The new information actually lines up better with Obama’s claim. But there are still problems with the idea that people are being put back to work.
How does the U.S. compare to the other advanced economies?
For this fact-check, we’ll use International Monetary Fund data (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2014/01/weodata/index.aspx). The IMF classifies 36 countries as "advanced economies" and seven of those as "major advanced economies." We looked at total average annual employment from 2010 through 2015. (This counts the number of payroll positions, meaning one person who works two jobs would be counted twice.)