WASHINGTON - Friday's news of yet another month of tepid job growth in April provided
Mitt Romney with an opening both to criticize the president's policies and to paint a picture for what a more effective recovery would be.
"We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs per month," the former
Massachusetts Governor said on "
Fox & Friends." "This is way, way, way off from what should happen in a normal recovery."
Half a million jobs a month is certainly an ambitious goal. But it's an arbitrary one as well. During
George W. Bush's presidency, there was never a single month in which job growth topped 400,000, let alone 500,000, according to
Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, as
Think Progress pointed out, "there have only been 16 months since 1939" in which the economy added half a million jobs in one month. ...
