President Obama is now taking credit for creating 15 million jobs.
That's how many new jobs have been created since the dark days of the Great Recession. Another solid month of hiring in September has brought the tally to over 15 million non-farm jobs.
"Anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction," President Obama said in his State of the Union address earlier this year. His critics counter that this is the slowest recovery since WW II.
This week Obama fought back at his detractors. He said his team has created a "more durable, growing economy" with "15 million new private-sector jobs since early 2010" in an essay in The Economist. Democrat Tim Kaine also used the 15 million jobs talking point in the vice presidential debate.
But Obama is using the most generous accounting possible to get that figure.
He doesn't start the count from his first day in office in 2009. Instead, he begins calculating job gains from February 2010, which was the lowest point for employment in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Under 130 million people were working then, according to U.S. Department of Labor. Now there are almost 145 million employed Americans.
CNNMoney used the Obama methodology (lowest employment point to highest) to see how he stacks up against recent presidents.
The result: Obama is still behind Presidents Clinton (22.9 million) and Reagan (18.1 million), but he's left President George W. Bush (8.2 million) in the dust.