If you've been following President-elect Donald Trump's Twitter feed, you might think the U.S. auto industry is rapidly shedding jobs by sending them to Mexico.

In fact, the American auto industry has been adding U.S. jobs faster than any major sector tracked by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Since the Obama administration took office in January 2009, the U.S. payrolls of car, truck and vehicle parts makers have expanded by nearly 35 percent — triple the pace of gains for the all private industry, according the latest BLS data reported on Friday.

That performance is better than all of the major industry categories tracked by the BLS.



The latest data are the last available before President Barack Obama leaves office after eight years presiding over the economic recovery from the biggest wave of jobs losses since the Great Depression. In the 12 months before he took office, U.S. automakers and parts suppliers shed more than 250,0000 jobs — more than a quarter of the entire industry workforce.

Since then, though auto-industry employment is still well below the peak of 1.3 million in June 2000, the sector has recovered nearly all of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, in part, because of the Obama administration's financial bailout of U.S. automakers.