Romney prefers to focus on his past as a corporate executive at Bain Capital, where he often invested in companies and laid off workers while reaping huge profits. But a closer look at Romney’s governorship of Massachusetts, from 2003 to 2007, reveals that his “experience” as a job-creator isn’t all that great. In fact, Massachusetts lagged behind the nation in virtually every economic measure, Andrew Sum, an economics professor at Northeastern University, told the Washington Post:

“There was not one measure where the state did well under his term in office. We were below average and often near the bottom,” said Sum, who is also the director of Northeastern’s Center for Labor Market Studies.

Romney’s campaign points out that he took over the state during a downturn, which is true. But Massachusetts was 47th in the nation in job creation during Romney’s time as governor, and by the beginning of the Great Recession, it still had not replaced 100,000 jobs lost to the 2001 recession, making it one of only four states not to have replaced all its lost jobs over that time period. The state’s jobs record during that time more closely resembled those of Rust Belt manufacturing states like Michigan and Ohio than the high-tech economies of New York and North Carolina, two states to which it had once compared itself.

While the unemployment rate under Romney did fall, it was largely due to contraction of the labor force — a criticism Romney has often leveled at Obama. According to Sum, the only state that saw a sharper drop in its labor force during Romney’s tenure was Louisiana, the state that was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Without Romney in command, the state’s economy has rebounded much faster from the next recession it faced, creating jobs at nearly twice the national rate and ranking in the top 10 nationally. Romney is banking his presidential campaign on his experience creating jobs and leading an economy out of a downturn. If these numbers are any indication, that’s an experience the American people may not want.

Hosts Eric Bolling, Steve Doocy, and Gretchen Carlson went beyond merely downplaying the numbers to contriving a conspiracy theory to explain them away:

BOLLING: So are they playing around with the numbers? Look, it’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it’s supposed to be non-partisan, but that’s the Department of Labor. Hilda Solis heads the Department of Labor, Hilda Solis works directly to Obama. I’m — you know.

DOOCY: Are you saying they’re cooking the books?

BOLLING: I’m saying there’s room for error. There’s room — when you’re talking about 4 million people, how do you know?

DOOCY: How do you know?

CARLSON: I don’t think anyone should surprised that in an election year — [...] So it’s interpretation, I think is the way in which we’d describe it.

Watch it, via Media Matters:

If it weren’t improper to psychologically analyse strangers, one might think the Fox hosts are displaying a textbook example of cognitive dissonance here, a psychological phenomena in which people who hold a strong belief about something invent (sometimes far fetched) explanations for new evidence that conflicts with their existing views. Obama is bad for the economy, the jobs numbers show the economy is doing better, so there must be something wrong with the jobs numbers. Needless to say, this is hardly the behavior one expects from fair and balanced journalists Fox hosts claim to be.

Meanwhile, some conservatives have developed a more sophisticated excuse for the jobs report, saying the drop in unemployment rate is only due to decreasing participation in the jobs market. Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and others have refuted this claim.

Earlier today, President Obama unveiled his latest initiative to reduce veteran unemployment: a $6 billion jobs corps program which, if approved by Congress, will create opportunities for returning service members to serve their country in a new capacity — as policemen, firefighters, and employees of the National Park Service.

In addition, General Eric Shinseki, the Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs and himself a wounded war veteran, announced that the Small Business Administration will begin offering online entrepreneurial training courses to veterans and their families.

These initiatives are the latest example of the Obama administration’s deep and ongoing commitment to taking care of our men and women in uniform, even as they transition out of the service. Since coming into office, President Obama has substantially increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is the VA that assumes responsibility for service members as they leave the force and transition back to civilian life, and its programs will only become more essential as more men and women return from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last November, Obama signed the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, which provides companies with a substantial tax credit if they hire unemployed or disabled veterans. And the President has also used his executive authority to establish a national Veterans Job Bank, authorize 6-months of career counseling at locations across the country, and create My Next Move, an online database that helps connect veterans with jobs that build off their military experience.

Perhaps most importantly, President Obama, the first lady, and Dr. Jill Biden have brought public attention to the problem of veteran unemployment and the valuable skills that our service members possess. All the president and his administration have done to highlight this issue appears to have prompted employers to take a second look.

As a result of the President’s policy, the jobless rate among post-9/11 veterans — as this blog noted earlier today — fell four percent in January, from 13.1 percent in December to 9.1 percent today. This is a tremendous improvement from one year ago, when the unemployment rate for these veterans stood at about 15 percent. And the initiatives announced by President Obama today will continue to target veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who suffer from unemployment rates significantly higher than those facing the broader veteran population.

President Obama has made much progress in tackling veteran unemployment. But much work remains to be done. The unemployment rate for veterans under the age of 25 is nearly 30 percent, more than twice the rate of civilians their age.

Moreover, with the war in Iraq over and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan coming to a close, the Pentagon has announced that it plans to reduce the ground forces to near their pre-war levels. This process will entail shedding about 100,000 ground troops, a move that will further increase the number of service members looking for civilian jobs.

Over the past decade, in the name of supporting our troops, Congress has steadfastly passed war supplemental after war supplemental. But it is imperative that this support does not end when our men and women in uniform come home. Congress should approve President Obama’s veterans jobs corps and allow these men and women who have served so admirably overseas to reinvest their efforts at home.

The NWLC noted that “women gained 95,000 jobs last month — 39 percent of the 243,000 jobs added. The largest gains for women were in professional and business services, which include temporary help services, and leisure and hospitality.”

Meanwhile, on air, the network has largely avoided the jobs news. A ThinkProgress analysis of the cable networks (via Critical Mention) shows that Fox only mentioned the new unemployment rate 9 times through 2:30 this afternoon, far less often than its competitors. Notably, Fox’s less-ideological sister network Fox Business mentioned the rate three times more often:

Fox News — 9 mentions
MSNBC –18 mentions
CNN –17 mentions
CNBC –12 mentions
Fox Business — 27 mentions

In December, after another good jobs report, Fox displayed a misleading and inaccurate graph that downplayed the drop in the jobless rate.

The report also showed a big drop for the entire veteran population, as the unemployment rate fell from 9.9 percent to 7.5 percent, lower than the national average.

The news is surely a welcome relief to the veteran community that has been hit especially hard by the weak economy. Unemployment rates for post-9/11 veterans have consistently remained above the national average, and a recent report issued by the U.S Army shows that the impact on returning soldiers has been devastating.

With the backing of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an emphasis on hiring veterans was a key component of President Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act, which was blocked at every turn by congressional Republicans. After voting down the full jobs bill in the Senate and House, Congress passed the Vow to Hire Heroes Act as a standalone bill nearly unanimously in November. The law provides tax credits to employers who hire veterans.

Today, President Obama spoke in Arlington, Virginia to unveil further efforts to place an increasing number of returning veterans in jobs. He called for an additional $6 billion in spending to place as many as 20,000 veterans in jobs, and is asking Congress to increase funding in the next budget for programs that will place veterans in local police and fire departments.

When the housing bubble imploded, so did Florida’s job growth. The state’s unemployment rate hit a high of 12 percent in December 2010 — one of the highest in the nation. Economists say it is improving, but slowly:

Although the market is starting to loosen up, there are four jobseekers for every open position in Florida, said Mason Jackson, chief executive of the WorkForce One career center in Fort Lauderdale. Businesses are still hesitant to hire because of continued uncertainty in the economy.

“If we filled every job we could find, 75% would still be unemployed,” Jackson said.

Nationally, 42.5 percent of unemployed workers have been looking for work for six months or more. Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) spent much of 2011 talking about the state’s one million unemployed workers and proposed tax credits to help spur job growth, which his aide admitted wouldn’t actually create jobs.

And the economic plans proposed by the leading GOP presidential candidates would not help Florida’s long-term unemployed workers either. Economists say Mitt Romney’s economic plan, which would lay off thousands of public sector workers, while doing nothing to alleviate the main drags on the U.S. economy. Newt Gingrich’s proposal, meanwhile, is based on a series of tax cuts that would give most of their benefits to the wealthy instead of aiding the middle and working classes.

The 42nd World Economic Forum Annual Meeting closed today, with business leaders urging resolute action to promote growth and employment, particularly among young people. “Jobs should be our number one priority,” declared Annual Meeting Co-Chair Vikram Pandit, Chief Executive Officer of Citi, in a session on the global agenda for 2012. “Ultimately it is about growth. Nothing creates jobs better than growth.”

But this proclamation comes just seven weeks after Citigroup announced 4,500 job cuts, and some analysts think those job cuts are just the “tip of the iceberg.” Overall, the financial industry cut 200,000 jobs in 2011. Bank of America has announced 30,000 job cuts that will take place over the next several years.

“Everybody knows, in any case, that profits are Pandit’s number one priority; to be honest I’d be surprised if jobs are on his priority list at all,” Salmon noted. “The markets like it when big banks cut jobs, and hate it when they add jobs. And Pandit’s job is to do what the market wants. Which is, fire people.”

To explain how to boost growth, Pandit broke out the favorite right-wing canard about “uncertainty” holding back job creation. But as economist Bruce Bartlett has pointed out, “regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out.”

But supporters of the law thought they had found a silver lining; after only a month, they claimed the immigration law was already causing the state’s unemployment rate to drop. And as the rate has continued to drop a little each month since portions of the law, officials and right-wing media have perpetuated the myth that HB 56 has caused the declining unemployment rate. After three months of declines, the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Scott Beason finally chimed in last week to celebrate the specious connection:

“Since the anti-illegal immigration law went into effect, Alabama has seen a tremendous drop in unemployment. A drop that far outpaces the other states in the region,” said Alabama State Senator Scott Beason. ”In three months Alabama has dropped 1.7 points to a level below the national average.” [...]

“I promised that the anti-illegal immigration law would open up thousands of jobs for Alabamians, and it has done that. People are going back to work.

“The critics may whine, but many of our neighbors have jobs again. I know those folks are thankful for the opportunity to work and support their families, and that opportunity was opened up by HB-56.”

Beason ignores the fact that even Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R), who signed the immigration bill into law, has admitted there is no data to back up the connection. And instead of opening up jobs, businesses have seen jobs lost because of HB 56. At least one jobs recruiter in the state has said the state may actually be driving away foreign companies looking to build new plants because of the immigration law.

Taking a closer look at the numbers shows that, as the unemployment rate dropped from 9.8 percent in September down to 8.1 percent in December, the workforce has also shrunk, rather than adding more jobs. For example, in October 3,578 Alabamians gained jobs, while 6,258 either died, left the state, or stopped looking for employment. And between December 2011 and November 2011, the civilian workforce in Alabama dropped from 2,145,259 people in November to 2,131,994 in December.

Beason and others who raise up Alabama’s immigration law as a job-creating measure are relying on a sleight of hand to hide the true harm behind the measure.

Even as the underlying factors affecting the overall unemployment rate (employment level, unemployment level, and number of people not in the labor force) changed, African-Americans saw “virtually no movement” in their official rate. The report compares the unemployment rate change by race:

Many factors are contributing to the stubbornly high unemployment rate of African-Americans. Since the recession began, at least 600,000 public sector jobs have been sacrificed for budget cuts. These layoffs fall heaviest on African-Americans, as “about one in five black workers have public sector jobs, and African-American workers are one-third more likely than white ones to be employed in the public sector.” Economists also note that the younger age of the African-American workforce, the lower number of college graduates, and the larger number living in low-income areas that were harder hit by the recession are all keeping the rate as high as it is.

Whatever the reasons, the trend is certainly disturbing. As the report notes, “Black male unemployment rates have fallen slightly and Black female unemployment rates have risen. In contrast, unemployment rates for white men and white women have fallen over the same time period.”

Understandably, in today’s economic climate any job is often perceived as better than no job at all. After all, unemployment remains at 8.5 percent, and 8.1 million people are involuntarily working part-time because their hours have been cut or they cannot find full-time work.

But while getting people back to work is an important goal, it is also important that workers be employed in positions where they can earn a living wage and receive benefits.

Case in point, nearly a quarter of a million jobs were added in the retail trade in 2011, and retail is projected to be one of the fastest growing industries though 2018. According to the National Retail Federation, “Retail Means Jobs,” as the industry supports 1 in 4 jobs in America.

On the surface this looks very promising. But a new report released by City University of New York and the Retail Action Project illustrates how the wages and working conditions of retail workers in New York City are often less than ideal — especially for women and people of color.

They surveyed retail workers in New York City — a major retail hub in the United States — and the findings of their study are stark. While about one-third of the survey respondents were economically supporting at least one family member, the median wage was only $9.50 an hour, with about 12 percent earning only the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

More than half of the retail workers surveyed were employed part-time, with only 29 percent receiving health benefits, and only 44 percent were entitled to paid sick days. Of those workers who did not receive health benefits from their employer, a quarter had no health insurance and slightly more than a third depended on government programs like Medicaid.

The findings were even more disheartening for women and people of color employed in retail, particularly given the fact that they comprise the majority of the workforce. Women earned less money, were more likely to be employed part-time, were less likely to have health coverage, and were less likely to be offered promotions than men.

These same patterns were true for people of color as well. Black and Latino retails workers are far less likely to be offered promotions, and as a result the wage gap increases significantly with job tenure. For example, white workers who had been on the job for six months or less still earned more than Latino workers who had been at the same job for more than two years.

As our nation’s economy continues to recover, we will be well served to remember that getting people back to work is not enough in and of itself. A strong middle class creates both economic growth and stability. The demand for goods and services that grows the economy comes mostly from the spending patterns of middle class consumers. Jobs that pay less than a living wage and that result in high levels of dependency on government services like Medicaid are not the answer to our economic problems.

Asked if the job loss showed “a flaw in the Bain Capital model,” Romney said that it was merely a result of America’s “free enterprise” system:

ROMNEY: Do I believe that free enterprise works? And that private equity and the various features of our economy work to actually improve our economy, to make America more productive with higher incomes and a brighter future? Absolutely…Free enterprise, with all of its dimensions and players, makes America the strongest economic nation in the world…Every time we invested, we tried to grow an enterprise, to add jobs, to make it more successful.

Watch it:

As Michael Kranish and Scott Helman write in The Real Romney, Bain Capital did not prioritize job creation in selecting investment opportunities. Instead, “It’s the opposite, what jobs we can cut,” Marc Wolpow, a former Bain partner who worked with Romney on many deals said, “because you had to document how you were going to create value.”

But last night, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) — who gave her much-sought after endorsement to Romney — told Fox News host Sean Hannity that it’s not fair for people to hold Romney accountable on the jobs claim:

HANNITY: Newt’s saying, though, that the governor’s record, whether or not he created 100,000 jobs net net net is fair game. Do you agree with that?

HALEY: You know, with all due respect to Mr. Gingrich, no. I mean –

HANNITY: It’s not fair to ask? That’s not fair?

HALEY: Well, I think what you have to understand is what does the private sector do? I come from a business background. I know that when times are tough, we have to make hard decisions — we never want to let people go. have to let people go. And when times are good, you love to expand.

Watch it:

Romney’s campaign has already admitted that the 100,000 number is, for all intents and purposes, bogus. Perhaps that’s why Romney himself has been revising his job creation claim downward over the last few days.