Mitt Romney and His Etch a Sketch Calculator

In an article at Forbes.com addressing Romney’s seemingly preposterous claim that “92.3% of all the jobs lost since Obama took office were lost by women” we are given a preview of how sharply we’ll need to watch and listen if we want to glean some truth from Team Romney.

 Forbes says, “Though that assertion is technically true, it fails to reflect the fact that more men than women have lost their jobs since the recession began, a fact that has led economists to dub it a ‘man-cession.’”

Romney's claim sounded ridiculous on its surface and of course it is. The fuzzy math here is that Romney counts the # of women who have lost their jobs since Obama took office and ignores the staggering job losses in the last months of the Bush Administration which i...s where the most good paying jobs traditionally associated with male employment such as manufacturing and construction were lost.

Boston.com reports that “…3.4 million men and 1.8 million women have lost jobs since the recession started, according to the government.” Romney squeezes the truth by starting his count on Jan-20 2009 as if nothing was much of consequence was in place before Obama took office which would have had any effect on employment. America should not be surprised at this tactic. Republicans have been talking about both deficits and unemployment as if the economy was not shrinking at an annualized pace of 9.3% in the last quarter of 2009.

TheForbes.com article continues:

“This is common in recessions, because male-dominated businesses like construction and manufacturing tend to be the first to be hit by job cuts during an economic downturn. The recession began in December 2007, 13 months before George W. Bush left office. From that point until Obama became president, men lost 3,264,000 jobs, while women lost 1,157,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 “Since Obama took office in January 2009, women have lost an additional 683,000 jobs. During the same period, men lost 57,000 jobs, according to the BLS. Hence Romney’s numbers.
“But other BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) data show that the unemployment rate for men, at 8.3%, is still higher than that for women, at 8.1%.”

Then to really put it in perspective, one more piece of the Boston.com piece: “Women were more heavily represented in jobs that suffered in the recession's later months and beyond, as revenue-strapped state and local governments laid off teachers and cut other public-sector workers.”

Now that has the ring of truth to it.