More People Have Gotten Food Stamps Than Jobs Under Obama

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday the Obama administration has created 7.2 million jobs over the years, but other reports are pointing out that twice that many people have started getting food stamps since President Barack Obama took office.

More than 32 million Americans were receiving assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program in January 2009, reports The Washington Times. However, by this April, the number has grown to almost 48 million people, or 16 million Americans — more than twice as many as got jobs.

And Carney didn't account in his speech for jobs that were lost or for the declines in workforce population through retirement or continued unemployment.

A Washington Post blog, citing figures on Wednesday from a Century Foundation report,  said that lower employment numbers are "almost 100 percent due to declines in the labor force participation rate, that is, the share of the population that's either employed or actively looking for work."

Part of the problem may be that even though people are getting jobs, that does not mean the jobs they find are paying the bills, reports The Century Foundation.

"Over 69 percent of the jobs created in Q2 2013 and over 57 percent of all the jobs created in the first half of 2013 were created in the three lowest wage sub-sectors of the economy," the report said. "Retail trade, administrative and waste services, and leisure and hospitality, that otherwise account for an aggregate of only 33 percent of all private sector jobs. These jobs, in the aggregate, pay an average of only $15.80 per hour, compared with the other two-thirds of private sector jobs, which pay $27.16 per hour. Relative to unemployment benefits and other assistance, jobs at $15.80 per hour put less than $3.00/hour more in the pockets of a newly working consumer."

The employment reports are also misleading, said The Century Foundation, because many of the newly hired aren't working all the time.

"Gains in employment, however welcome, are not translating to meaningful economic growth in this “sick-onomy," said report writer Daniel Alpert. "Not when the only folks engaging in meaningful hiring are doing so because labor is cheap and, on a real basis, getting cheaper. And not when we are stuck with, on a seasonally adjusted basis, a mere 116.8 million full time workers, plus an additional 27.3 million working between one and 34 hours a week, trying to support a population of 316.3 million people."

In addition, an estimated 9.5 million workers have given up on their job searches and dropped out of the labor force, reports Breitbart.com, since Obama became president, and another 1.6 million have signed up to collect disability payments.