Has Obama Added 200,000 New Federal Jobs?

In a press conference today, House Speaker John Boehner said, "In the last two years, under President Obama, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs." Boehner expressed little sympathy for the people holding these positions in the event that Congress enacts major budget cuts: "If some of those jobs are lost so be it. We're broke."

Wait a minute: 200,000 jobs? That sounds like a lot in just the last two years. The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe immediately pointed out that it's difficult to get a handle on such numbers. But he noted that John Palguta of the Partnership for Public Service has cited OPM statistics showing that from October 2008 to March 2010, there were more than 201,000 new hires into full-time, permanent, non-seasonal federal jobs. And that doesn't include postal workers, temporary Census enumerators or uniformed military service members.

Still, that's new hires, not "new federal jobs," as Boehner said. Many of those hired presumably replaced people who had quit or retired. That would explain why, as Emily Long pointed out yesterday, Obama could propose to boost the size of the workforce by 15,000 employees in fiscal 2012, and still end up with 12,000 fewer workers than in fiscal 2010.

Update, 4:35 p.m.: O'Keefe has updated his post to put the 200,000 figure in context, noting that in fiscal 2010, more than 91,000 employees left government service, and another 82,692 did so in fiscal 2009.