Apr

2012

1:19pm, EDT

FACT CHECK: Romney's women jobs-loss claim paints incomplete picture

By Domenico Montanaro, Deputy Political Editor, NBC News

In an effort to bolster his sagging poll numbers with female voters, Mitt Romney and his campaign have made this new charge: that women have accounted for 92 percent of the job losses since President Obama took office.

Here’s what Romney said yesterday while campaigning in Delaware:

"There's been some talk about a war on women. The real war on women has been waged by the Obama administration's failure on the economy. Do you know what percentage of job losses during the Obama years of have been casualties of women losing jobs as opposed to men? Do you know how many women, what percent of the job losses were women? 92.3 percent of the job losses during the Obama years have been women who've lost those jobs."

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The Romney campaign also held a conference call making this same point. "The number of unemployed women has increased by nearly a million under Barack Obama," surrogate Bay Buchanan said. "Ninety-two percent of the jobs lost since he took office are women."

But First Read contacted the Bureau of Labor Statistics to get to the bottom of this 92 percent charge. The conclusion: The Romney campaign’s figures don’t tell the whole story.

The campaign, in a research document circulated yesterday and on its website, said the numbers come from the “Current Employment Statistics” database at BLS. The document notes that there was a net change of -740,000 nonfarm payroll jobs from January 2009 to March 2012 -- and that women accounted for 683,000 of those jobs.

That is accurate, according to BLS. But Brian Davidson, an economist at BLS, told First Read: “The math they use is correct; the terminology is completely wrong.”

Davidson noted that women actually make up a larger share of the workforce now than they did in Jan. 2008 before the financial meltdown, and since January 2009, it is a statistically insignificant change.

In January 2008, women made up 48.8 percent of the workforce; in January 2009, 49.5 percent; now 49.3 percent.

“Do we still have the same amount of women workers relative to men in the ‘net-change’? Yes we do,” Davidson said.

He added, “It’s like trying to pull a bunny out of a hat, but there’s no bunny inside.”

Independent fact-checkers like Politifact and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker also took on the claim.

Giving the claim a “Mostly False,” Politifact called it “misleading”: “We found that though the numbers are accurate, their reading of them isn’t.”

“One could reasonably argue that January 2009 employment figures are more a result of President George W. Bush’s policies, at least as far as any president can be blamed or credited for private-sector hiring,” Politifact wrote. “We reached out to Gary Steinberg, spokesman for the BLS, for his take on the claim. He pointed out that women’s job losses are high for that period of time because millions of men had already lost their jobs. Women were next. … [I]f you count all those jobs lost beginning in 2007, women account for just 39.7 percent of the total. … There is a small amount of truth to the claim, but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.”

The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, begins this way: “[W]e frown on the somewhat arbitrary dividing line of measuring jobs statistics by presidential terms. It is a common journalistic — and political — metric. But restarting the employment clock from the moment the president takes the oath of office doesn’t tell you much about a his performance, especially since it takes time for the new president’s policies to take effect.”

In fact, he writes, “[T]here is less to this stat than meets the eye. … If you start the data in February, then the overall job loss is just 16,000 jobs—while women lost 484,000 jobs. … How could women lose more jobs than the overall total? It’s a function of the dates one picks.”

And notably: “[T]he picture becomes clearer if you start running the data from the date the recession began — December 2007. With that starting point, the total decline in jobs was just over 5 million, with women accounting for nearly 1.8 million of those jobs. Now look what happens when we just look at the past year, March 2011 to March 2012. Men gained nearly 1.9 million jobs while women gained 635,000 jobs.”

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*** CORRECTION *** An earlier version of this post noted that the Romney campaign used numbers from January 2009. The campaign has reached out to First Read and notes that it used January 2009 as a "baseline."

"We use January 2009 as the baseline, which means the first month of losses charged to Obama is the decline in February vs. January," said campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul.

*** UPDATE *** Saul also passes along a letter written by its policy director, Lanhee Chen, to dispute the Politifact story (and "Mostly False" rating) that attempted a fact check on a Tweet by Saul referencing the numbers. Chen accuses Politifact of a "failure to focus on the appropriate context."

"First, why should it matter that men had already lost millions of jobs?" Chen wrote. "Was it now women’s 'turn'? Is this part of the President’s conception of “fairness” that he talks about so frequently? If the data showed the opposite (i.e. that women had been disproportionately hurt prior to the President taking office), we imagine you would have used that as an indictment of Ms. Saul by arguing that the trend was inherent to the recession and predated the President."

Chen concluded, "In summary, your piece confirms Ms. Saul’s claim as accurate, and then relies on a direct contradiction with a prior Politifact piece and incorrect claims from two publicly acknowledged Obama supporters (including one Administration official!) as the basis for rating it “Mostly False.” I hope you will agree that this rating was inappropriate and that the piece does not reflect the journalistic standards to which your organization intends to hold itself. Please retract the piece and issue a correction as soon as possible."

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backfire

And don't forget to bring your base:

http://theswash.com/humor-2/felonious-monks-anti-obama-rant

#104 - Wed Apr 11, 2012 8:59 PM EDT

Anita-2036926

I have no idea what Romney's positions are regarding women's issues. What is clear to me is that he can not be trusted. Even if he supports women's rights to choice, equal pay, reproductive health care etc I have no doubt whatsoever that he would deal it all away if he needed to get a tax cut for his friends through congress. His entire philosophical underpinnings are apparently economic. Nothing will get in the way of "business."

#105 - Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:38 PM EDT

1Foolish-Idea

Can't believe the GOP put out numbers that were half true at best. Did they REALLY think no one was going to check?

We American's are so tired of the Republican party putting out falsehoods, half-truths, and down-right lies. The GOP leadership must think the American voters are stupid.

But then again, out of a country of more than 300 million, Mitt (dog-on-the-car-roof) Romney is the best they have to offer after months of watching that CLOWN SHOW?

I'll stay with the only adult in the race....President Barack Obama.

#106 - Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:40 PM EDT

Don-3344829

Mr Flip Flop is too stupid to ever be president' The Tea Party and Paul Ryan has caused the Republicans to lose the upcoming election and they pretend that everything is all right.
The party of no has gridlocked every constructive bill that has come before them and pretend that everything is the presidents fault,refusing to put the countrys best interest first. They just sat on their hands,mocked and belittled the president as if everything in the country was just fine.
When the Republican presidents were spending trillions of dollars they never said a word or took a stand about the deficit being too big,they just continued with their double standard policys and all at once they decided that the country was broke and guess who's fault it was. It was the old,sick and elderly along with the baby boomers retiring that wasted all the money. The Republicians had nothing to do with it.
So they said we have got to stop giving people the benefits they have paid into all their natural life while they were working so we need to cut their Medicare benefits and raise the retirement age high enough that only people that have good clean jobs and preventive health care will live long enough to draw So, Sec. so we will just say everybody is living longer. They decided that people that work in coal mines, grain elevators, and many other hazzard insdustries could just drift in the wind. If the Republicians have nothing else, they have GALL and lots of it.
They decided that millionaires should pay less taxes than the middle class working people and said we will gridlock everything even if it cost the country its credit rateing we dont care. The very wealthy they were protecting were pouring millions into their election campaigns.You would think that if one is wealthy enough to spend millions on election campaigns he shouldnt be concerened about paying taxes.
They have declared war on 54 million seniors benefits,war on the middle class working people to pay all the taxes,war on womens rights,war on womens contraception by planned parenthood, and they have made it clear that they would like to get rid of all unions. How in the world they think they will get Mr Flip Flop Camen Islands elected is a mystery. When you scorn 85% of voters they will not forget. Do they not know its all about TRUST and come November I think some people are in for a rude awakening.

#107 - Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:43 PM EDT

Mackie-4741671

Few things I hate worse than men who draft 2000 word articles on unemployed women, and paid top dollar to do so, while calling themselves, "deputy" anything.

Do us a favor - speak for yourselves and let us speak for our situation.

("Deputy Dawg" more like it)

#108 - Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:48 PM EDT

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marshal-2837579

But mr grover, the gop & the rushbo's war on women is in large part due to their belief that man-made climate change does not exist. So logically large, large families are ok. 7 kids, 8 kids like octomom. And hey how about 19 kids like i saw on tv. The gop likes large, large families. They will set an example for china & india too. Only one child per familiy in china. But remember 1930-2B. Today-7B. And 97% of the scientists tell you human activity is already affecting the weather. That's why the gop have a war against planned parenthood.

#109 - Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:55 PM EDT

Common Sense- 4 U

I know Romney voters are just voting against Obama......

If any Romney voter disagrees with my statement it would be nice if you could articulate why you like Romney and what his plan is..........

But that won't happen.......Not ONE single Romney supporter can say why they like him and what his plan is..........

But can anyone really think this guy cares about the average American?

Of course not.....He doesn't.....He says he doesn't.........So why because he wears an elephant pin do right wingers think he is right wing?

#110 - Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:57 PM EDT

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