Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed that job losses in 2008 were a reaction to President Obama's election in November of that year. In fact, the U.S. economy began losing jobs in February 2008, and the pace of job losses began to accelerate prior to the election.

Limbaugh's claim is part of the right-wing media's efforts to erase the collapse of the economy under President Bush and deny Obama credit for economic improvements during his term.

Below is a table showing the monthly change in jobs for the 14 months before Obama took office. Contrary to Limbaugh's statement that “the bottom fell out” after Obama was elected, the economy lost 489,000 jobs in October 2008, which was the largest monthly job loss since May 1980.

Limbaugh encouraged his listeners to "[g]o back and look at the monthly unemployment numbers" to confirm his claim. But the numbers debunk Limbaugh's attempt to blame Obama for job losses that took place even before he took office.

From the July 3 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: The vast, vast majority of problems we have in this country are directly traceable to liberals, Democrats. And I know that that sounds simplistic and it probably is not persuasive, but I'm sorry, I don't know how else to say it. I really don't. And it isn't complicated. It isn't complicated to explain why these things are happening. And here's Henry Waxman -- well, you know, he inherited a horrible economy, hemorrhaging jobs in 2008 -- they started hemorrhaging jobs in this economy after Obama was elected in 2008. Go back and look at the monthly unemployment numbers and then take a look at November and December and then Jan-- the bottom fell out, the Wall Street bottom fell out, and it hasn't recovered. But these people had all the answers. Hope and change. Everything was going to be better now. They had miracles waiting to enact. Everything they have done has brought great damage to this economy under the guise of fixing it.