We also find it ironic that the White House chart depicts Barack Obama as a manufacturing-job loser. During the Obama administration, when Biden served as vice president, White House spokesmen insisted on saying manufacturing-job growth should be measured from the low point reached during the Great Recession in February 2010 — not from when Obama took office a year earlier. Obama’s flacks claimed that he should not be tagged with the earlier job losses because he inherited a plunging economy. Moving the starting point to February 2010 turns Obama’s lackluster job record into a big 900,000 gain in manufacturing employment.

Apparently that spin has been forgotten. …

Once again: The number of jobs in the United States rises and falls for reasons that sometimes have little to do with a president’s policies. While Obama had the bad luck to start his presidency during an economic swoon, Trump and Biden had the good fortune to start their presidencies during economic booms. But as Trump found out, that luck does not always last.

In this case, comparing the monthly manufacturing jobs records of presidents who served four years and eight years with Biden’s 19 months is as silly as Trump’s unemployment claim during his 2020 State of the Union address. The tweet mitigated the claim somewhat with the phrase “right now” — acknowledging that it could change — but it’s still a misleading metric even if the numbers add up.