Several weeks ago Mr. Obama focused his jobs argument on the company that Mr. Romney founded, Bain Capital. Employment growth is usually a byproduct of a firm's successful pursuit of profit. But it's become clear that even by the most conservative estimates, Bain has helped create more than 100,000 jobs by making companies grow.
This is especially embarrassing for the White House because, according to the seasonally adjusted jobs numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its household survey, 100,000 is the total net increase in U.S. jobs since January 2009 when Mr. Obama took office.
To appreciate how anemic this figure is, remember that there are more than 313 million Americans, and the U.S. population grows by more than two million people every year. So according to one government measure of job growth, the entire U.S. economy during the Obama Administration has not matched the business founded by Mitt Romney even three years after the recession ended.
Many economists put more stock in the government's so-called establishment survey. But that shows not a small gain but a decline of more than 550,000 jobs during the Obama era.
