COLUMBIA, S.C. (WACH, AP) -- South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley is touting state job numbers, repeatedly saying she's thrilled about the 10,000 jobs announced since she took office. But there's a little more to the story.
Some employers are hiring this year, but thousands of those jobs won't come online for years. And the governor's boast includes hundreds of jobs with Amazon.com that she actually fought.
"You don't keep somebody off the list because you had a dispute about the policies associated with it," Haley said. "What the people of this state want to know is how many jobs we've announced since taking office, and we've stayed very true to that."
After repeated questions from The Associated Press, the Haley administration changed its tally several times before dropping it to 9,000 jobs; 4,000 of those are with Wal-Mart.
At the announcement of the Wal-Mart jobs in May, Gov. Haley said, "This is a strong company that already employs almost 28,000 people in our state. To have them continue to invest in South Carolina and create more than 4,000 additional jobs is something we're going to celebrate."
To be sure, the six-month tally is encouraging for a state long suffering with high unemployment. And the head of the state manufacturers association says he's pleased with Haley's recruiting.
The governor's office says it is not being misleading. Haley says she is working on bringing more jobs to rural areas.
"If we're bringing 50 jobs or 700, we're pretty excited about it," Haley said. "Every job in South Carolina is valuable. Ask those 10 people who got those jobs what it means to them."
Haley said on Tuesday at her Cabinet meeting that the media is being too negative following the news about employment figures.
During the meeting she said the media doesn't want to report anything positive about her administration. She says regardless of exact jobs totals, other governors are jealous.
Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt says the overstatement was his agency's fault.
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(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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