Carrier and President-elect Donald Trump reached an agreement to keep nearly 1,000 jobs in Indiana. Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence planned to travel to Indiana on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016, to unveil the agreement alongside company officials. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

(CNSNews.com) - "Early indications are that this is good news," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday after Carrier decided, under pressure from President-Elect Donald Trump, to keep 1,000 jobs at its air conditioner plant in Indianapolis.



"I know that the president-elect has indicated that he deserves credit for -- for that announcement, and I guess what I would observe is that if he is successful in doing that 804 more times, then he will meet the record of manufacturing jobs that were created in the United States while President Obama was in office. There were 805,000 manufacturing jobs that weren't just protected or saved, but actually created while President Obama was in office.



"So President Obama has set a high standard," Earnest said. He also noted that where Trump is "talking about protecting jobs," Earnest is talking about "actually creating jobs."

"If we go to protecting jobs, there are more than a million jobs in the industrial Midwest that were saved when President Obama made the decision to rescue the American auto industry, and the long-term benefits of that fateful decision that was not initially popular has yielded a substantial benefit for the entire country, but certainly for the industrial Midwest."



Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence are visting the Carrier plant on Thursday. ("They will sell many air conditioners!" Trump tweeted yesterday.)

During the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama set a goal of creating 1 million new manufacturing jobs in his second term. The Alliance for American Manufacturing is tracking Obama's job-creation pledge and finds it lacking.



As of Nov. 4, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its October jobs report, just 298,000 manufacturing jobs had been created since Obama's second term began – 702,000 away from the president’s 2012 goal. "He'll need 234,000 new jobs each month for his last three months in office if he wants to reach his goal," the Alliance said in a blog post.



According to the National Association of Manufacturers, "Manufacturing employment growth has been disappointing of late, with hiring down for three straight months and the sector losing 62,000 workers on net year to date."



The next report on employment in general and manufacturing jobs in particular is due out on Friday, Dec. 2.

Also See:

Government Workers Now Outnumber Manufacturing Workers by 9,977,000

