Did Obama really create 2.7 million jobs in clean energy?
Obama’s clean energy attack ad is below.
The voiceover says,
… while independent watchdogs call this President’s record on ethics unprecedented and America’s clean energy industry, 2.7 mllion jobs and expanding rapidly…
So the ad glibly gives the impression that Obama created 2.7 million jobs. Not so.
The though the ad sources the Brookings Institution for the 2.7 million jobs figure, Brookings actually stated,
The clean economy, which employs some 2.7 million workers, encompasses a significant number of jobs in establishments spread across a diverse group of industries. Though modest in size, the clean economy employs more workers than the fossil fuel industry and bulks larger than bioscience but remains smaller than the IT-producing sectors…
The clean economy grew more slowly in aggregate than the national economy between 2003 and 2010, but newer “cleantech” segments produced explosive job gains and the clean economy outperformed the nation during the recession. Overall, today’s clean economy establishments added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, expanding at an annual rate of 3.4 percent. This performance lagged the growth in the national economy, which grew by 4.2 percent annually over the period (if job losses from establishment closings are omitted to make the data comparable)…
So only 500,000 jobs were created during 2003-2010. But Obama didn’t become President until 2009. That means only about 125,000 jobs were created during 2009-2010 — that’s about 4.6% of what Obama’s ad implies.
Also note that “clean energy” jobs lagged growth of non-clean energy jobs.
via: junkscience
