A little math with the job numbers

So, between corrections to the last two months and today's news, Bush can claim 513,000 jobs in three months (205,00 + 308,000). (Got the numbers from here.)

Now, the replacement number is 140-150,000 per month. Let's use the lower number. That means we needed 420,000 jobs just to "break even".

So that's 93,000 jobs net for this quarter.

I go through the math because it drives me nuts when people talk about job loss by saying things like "Bush has lost over 2 million jobs since he took office."

Not because I think it's not fair to Bush. Because I think it's not fair to us. Bush has lost jobs that existed before he took office. But he has also lost more jobs almost every month he's been in office -- every month that didn't produce at least 140,00 new jobs should add the difference to the total.

If anybody knows where to look up the historical numbers, I think this would be an interesting factoid to try to insert into the national conversation.