Fox News anchor Jenna Lee highlighted the extremely misleading statistic that the economy has lost more than 470,000 jobs since January 2009. In doing so, Lee ignored the fact that President Obama took office in the middle of a deep recession when hundreds of thousands of jobs were being shed each month.

Responding to the release of the June jobs report showing a gain of 80,000 jobs last month, President Obama highlighted the positive trend in private sector job growth, noting that “businesses have created 4.4 million new jobs over the past 28 months.” After repeating Obama's comments, Lee said:

LEE: But remember, the president has been in office for roughly three and a half years, and according to the Labor Department, since the president took office in January of 2009, and private and public sectors combined have actually lost 473,000 jobs.

But Lee didn't explain that when Obama was sworn in, the economy was losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month on account of the recession. 

Lee also ignored the fact that soon after Obama took office, the pace at which the economy shed jobs slowed and eventually jobs started being added to the economy. A Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report on the recession found that “the pace of monthly job losses slowed dramatically soon after President Obama and Congress enacted the Recovery Act.” The report also found, like Obama said, that “private employers added nearly 4.4 million jobs” in the past 28 months.

Fox has previously gone to great lengths to separate the recession and the Bush economy from current economic conditions.