The White House threw a little shade Wednesday on President-elect Donald Trump’s apparently successful effort to keep 1,000 manufacturing jobs in Indiana, saying it’s nice but pales in comparison to the jobs created under President Obama.

Referring to Mr. Trump’s persuading the air conditioning firm Carrier to keep jobs from being transferred to Mexico, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, “If he is successful in doing that 804 more times, then he will meet the record of manufacturing jobs created in the United States while President Obama was in office.”

The president’s spokesman said the Carrier announcement was “good news.” But he noted that the action involved saving current jobs, rather than creating new ones.

By that measure, he said, Mr. Obama “saved” more than 1 million jobs in the auto industry bailout in 2009.

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