President Biden’s first year could be going better, as I think even he would acknowledge. He’s being hammered in approval polling for a variety of reasons, including that Americans are skeptical of his handling of the economy. Were you in his shoes, you might be forgiven for being frustrated at that perception; after all, on the metrics that President Donald Trump used to measure his tenure — jobs, and the markets in particular — Biden’s doing pretty well. In fact, the president couldn’t resist bragging about it on Twitter.

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       This is what presidents do, offer this sort of rhetoric about jobs added despite the multitude of factors that influence job creation that are outside of the president’s control. But this particular claim, centered on a raw total of jobs added, is annoying (as it has been before). There are more people in the country than ever, after all, an important bit of context for any such records.

       But these arguments are common. Here, for example, is a graph that was shared thousands of times on Twitter.

       Not to pick on Virginia Heffernan, who shared it, but here, too, an enormous amount of context is missing. For one, the columns are comparing monthly job growth over entire terms with Biden’s 10 months, something of an apples-to-oranges comparison. Trump’s last 10 months included a global pandemic, as you probably heard, pushing his pre-pandemic monthly average of 187,000 jobs added into negative territory.

       If we compare just the first 10 months of each president’s tenure, the picture is quite different. Here, for example, President Barack Obama’s figure is negative, since his first 10 months were marred by the global recession. But in terms of raw job growth, Biden leads the pack.

       But adding 5.9 million jobs in a country of 330 million is very different than adding that many jobs in a country of, say, 220 million. That was the population in 1977, when President Jimmy Carter oversaw an increase of 3.5 million jobs. That’s a faster rate of job growth over the same period.

       If we re-create that column graph (and extend it back a bit), the picture is different.

       But again, we have to consider that Biden inherited a very specific and very unusual economic moment. Tens of millions of people stopped working last year, with millions still not back at work. There is a difference, however subtle, between the economy expanding to accommodate new workers and refilling vacant employment positions. If we look at each president’s first 10 months of employment changes relative to the peak in employment before their first full months in office, we see that the growth this year has been solely filling an inherited hole. Carter’s was an expansion of employment to new heights.

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       Again, Carter doesn’t deserve full credit for that change. One could certainly argue that Biden’s policies have had more of a direct impact on the job market than Carter’s, given the pandemic and the push for spending that accompanied Biden’s first months in office. But it is useful to consider that increase in the broader context of the economy and the moment.

       We like jobs numbers because they are a concrete indicator of the health of the economy. Presidents in particular like that data for that reason. And of course, job growth is good, putting people to work.

       What is not so good is using out-of-context or incomparable data for partisan point-scoring.