National Review editor Rich Lowry erroneously asserted that the jobs figure Senator John Kerry cited during the October 8 presidential debate -- 1.6 million lost since President George W. Bush took office -- was outdated. Appearing on FOX News Channel's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren following the second presidential debate (just past midnight on October 9), Lowry claimed that Kerry “twice misstated the job loss number, saying 1.6 million, which is a number that is out of date but it is inconvenient for him to update it, so he didn't.”

But Kerry's numbers are not “out of date.” According to the latest job numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), approximately 1,634,000 private-sector jobs have been lost between January 2001 (when Bush took office) and September 2004. (To view the numbers, click here, select “Total Private Employment -- Seasonally Adjusted,” then select “retrieve data.”)

Later on the program, Washington Post staff writer Ceci Connolly stated that Lowry had made “a very good point”; she then stated that Kerry's 1.6 million figure was “not quite true. We are now at a net loss of about 800,000 jobs.” Connolly appeared to mistakenly attribute to Lowry the claim that Kerry was being deceptive by excluding public-sector jobs from his count, although Lowry actually had accused Kerry of using outdated figures.

While Connolly neglected to explain on October 9 that Kerry's figure was accurate for private-sector employment, Connolly and fellow Post staff writer Glenn Kessler did document that fact in an article published in that day's edition of The Washington Post. As Media Matters for America has noted, private-sector employment numbers include all non-government jobs; these numbers are arguably a better economic indicator than total non-farm employment, which includes public-sector employment and was used by Connolly to calculate the 800,000 figure.