Is this what you meant by Hope and Change Mr. President? From CNN Fact Check scrutinizing the awesome recovery Democrats were trumpeting at their convention:

Anyone watching the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night heard the number 4.5 million several times.”Despite incredible odds and united Republican opposition, our president took action, and now we’ve seen 4.5 million new jobs,” San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, the party’s keynote speaker, said….

The number Castro cites is an accurate description of the growth of private-sector jobs since January 2010, when the long, steep slide in employment finally hit bottom. But while a total of 4.5 million jobs sounds great, it’s not the whole picture.

Nonfarm private payrolls hit a post-recession low of 106.8 million that month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figure currently stands at 111.3 million as of July.

While that is indeed a gain of 4.5 million, it’s only a net gain of 300,000 over the course of the Obama administration to date. The private jobs figure stood at 111 million in January 2009, the month Obama took office.

And total nonfarm payrolls, including government workers, are down from 133.6 million workers at the beginning of 2009 to 133.2 million in July 2012. There’s been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.

Meanwhile, the jobs that have come back aren’t the same ones that were lost.

The reason why I highlight this is I’m using the data that the Democrats are citing.  So what I did is I went and looked at the January 2010 and today’s report for September 2012.  The key variable in these tables is “Not in Labor Force”.  The number of people not in the labor force has risen from 83,663,000 in January 2010 to 88,710,000 as of today.  That means that 5.047 million people have left the workforce since the recovery began as cited by Democrats.  Over 500,000 more people have left the work force than people who got a job.

In summary, we have more people leaving the work force than are getting jobs and we’re paying significantly higher food and gas prices so we have to work more to make ends meet, sacrificing time with our families and friends.  Is this what Obama calls a recovery?  Do you know what this equals?

STAGFLATION

The economy isn’t going anywhere.  We’re just a drifting ship that is taking on water that is called debt.  Do Americans want four more years of fear and misery, worried about holding onto a job not knowing when the axe could drop, four more years of working harder to stay afloat?   The only thing we’ll get if Obama is re-elected?  Misery and fear.  Americans are really hurting out there and they don’t really feel good right now.

At least people are trying to find work but it is very hard.  More from today’s job report:

The civilian labor force rose by 418,000 to 155.1 million in September, while the labor force participation rate was little changed at 63.6 percent.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) rose from 8.0 million in August to 8.6 million in September. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

This is the Obama Part-Time Economy.  It really doesn’t have to be this way.