A Look at Former President Bill Clinton's Claim

On Wednesday night, former President Bill Clinton took to the stage to speak out on behalf of President Obama. President Obama, Clinton said, deserves another four years in office.

One of the lines from former President Clinton's speech that got people talking was this one:

"And in the last 29 months, our economy has produced about 4.5 million private-sector jobs."

Wait a minute, many people said. The national unemployment rate is currently 8.3%. Is Clinton's statement actually true?

The answer - yes, this statement is true.

According to the BLS, there was a preliminary total of 111,317,000 private sector jobs in July of 2012 (seasonally adjusted). This compares to a total of 106,914,000 private sector jobs (seasonally adjusted) as of March, 2010.

111,317,000 - 106,914,000 = 4,403,000 million jobs.

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Let's take a look at the total non-farm payroll job growth from the last 29 months, just in case you were curious, courtesy of the BLS:

2010-03-01, 189,000
2010-04-01, 239,000
2010-05-01, 516,000
2010-06-01, -167,000
2010-07-01, -58,000
2010-08-01, -51,000
2010-09-01, -27,000
2010-10-01, 220,000
2010-11-01, 121,000
2010-12-01, 120,000
2011-01-01, 110,000
2011-02-01, 220,000
2011-03-01, 246,000
2011-04-01, 251,000
2011-05-01, 54,000
2011-06-01, 84,000
2011-07-01, 96,000
2011-08-01, 85,000
2011-09-01, 202,000
2011-10-01, 112,000
2011-11-01, 157,000
2011-12-01, 223,000
2012-01-01, 275,000
2012-02-01, 259,000
2012-03-01, 143,000
2012-04-01, 68,000
2012-05-01, 87,000
2012-06-01, 64,000
2012-07-01, 163,000

The June and July numbers are both preliminary.