Thursday, September 8, 2016

Conservative Media's New Lie About Obama and Coal Jobs

Conservative media keeps saying there have been 83,000 coal mining jobs lost under President Obama. The problem is that there were barely that many coal mining jobs total when President Obama took office.

Total U.S. coal mining jobs, according to the Energy Information Administration:
  • 2009: 86,859
  • 2014: 74,931 (most recent year available)
If you believe the historic trends, the war on coal began under President Reagan and has had only modest success under President Obama:


The truth is that mechanization has been killing coal jobs for decades. As the Center for American Progress reports, in recent years, cheap fracked gas and competition with foreign coal have done as much to hurt coal as clean air regulations.

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