I have made some very rough calculations to come to the conclusion that President Obama has saved 5 Million jobs since he got the The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed in February of 2009.

Here is how I came to that conclusion. I got the job loss data from January 2009 through February 2010 from the Bureau Of Labor Statistics. Had the job losses for the month before the ARRA act was passed continued through February 2010, the cumulative job losses would have been 9 million jobs. These are the jobs that would have been lost if the rate of job loss had not gotten any worse nor any better without Obama’s actions.

The actual cumulative job loss over that period has been 4 million jobs. So, crudely, we can estimate that Obama’s actions have saved 5 million jobs.

I show the data and my calculations below.

Data from Bureau Of Labor Statistics

Data extracted on: February 17, 2010 (8:45:11 PM)

Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)

1-Month Net Change
Series Id: CES0000000001
Seasonally Adjusted
Super Sector: Total nonfarm
Industry: Total nonfarm
NAICS Code: –
Data Type: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Annual
2007	194	104	239	92	149	55	-20	-71	52	86	128	70
2008	-10	-50	-33	-149	-231	-193	-210	-334	-458	-554	-728	-673
2009	-779	-726	-753	-582	-347	-504	-344	-211	-225	-224	64	-150(P)
2010	-20(P)
P : preliminary

The following table shows my calculations.

Data Source for Job Loss column is http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?series_id=CES0000000001&output_view=net_1mth

For whatever reason, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette decided to publish a letter about these 5 million jobs.