White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee-Sanders doubled down on false claims that Obamacare is a job killer while making the ridiculous assertion heard earlier on CNN that the solid job growth in April was driven by job creation in manufacturing. In reality, the vast majority of jobs came from health care, business services, and hospitality while only a fraction came from manufacturing.

During a May 5 White House press briefing, Politico’s Matthew Nussbaum asked Huckabee-Sanders if President Donald Trump still believed Obamacare was “a job killer” after the April 2017 jobs report showed a net gain of 211,000 jobs as part of a record breaking 79 consecutive months of job growth. Huckabee-Sanders initially deflected before making the head-turning statement that “the most growth in this jobs report were in manufacturing, coal miners, other places.” An odd statement considering a breakdown of the jobs report by employment industry showed the manufacturing sector created only 6,000 jobs last month while coal mining added approximately 200 total jobs. Even after accounting for all mining and logging jobs (10,000 jobs), as well as the “Other” category (7,000 jobs), the huge majority of new jobs created in April were created elsewhere:

The White House’s claim that job growth was concentrated in coal mining and manufacturing is nonsensical. Coal mining’s mere 200 new jobs does not even account for one-tenth of one percent of all the jobs created in April -- by comparison, the performing arts created 32 times as many jobs (6,400) as coal mining. The greatest job growth in the April report came from the “Leisure and hospitality” industry, which added 55,000 jobs. Education and health care services added 41,000 jobs during the same timeframe, and according to data compiled by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, since 2007 -- the start of the Great Recession -- these two sectors have seen the largest job gains of any industry:

This clear break with reality follows an earlier misstep by CNN, which also hyped manufacturing growth in the April jobs report despite there being little reason to boast. If CNN or the White House are truly interested in jobs, perhaps they should look at what gutting Obamacare would do to employment in the health care and social services industry, an industry that has seen some of the largest post-recession gains in the U.S. economy and employs more workers (19.4 million) than the entire manufacturing sector (12.4 million).