British Columbia Premier Christy Clark is claiming success for the B.C. Jobs Plan, even though the province gained more jobs in the six months before she announced the strategy than in the six months since.

Here's how Clark put it in a tweet this morning: "BC Jobs Plan 6 Month Update: Permit backlogs reduced, mines open & 39,900 net new jobs added to the econ this past yr."

That matched the claims made in a pair of government press releases this week, and in a 36-page progress report released today on the jobs plan which highlighted that the province had gained 39,900 net new jobs in the past 12 months.

Clark, who was sworn in as premier in March, 2011, announced the jobs plan in September, just six months ago.

According to Statistics Canada seasonally-adjusted labour force statistics as presented by B.C. Stats, B.C. did gain 39,900 jobs between February 2011 and February 2012.

But in the six months since Clark announced her jobs plan, B.C. gained just 2,000 jobs, using seasonally adjusted figures. In the first half of the year, before Clark's jobs push, the province had already gained 37,900.

And since employment is generally stronger in the summer, the picture becomes worse when you consider actual employment numbers. While there were 2,304,200 working in the province in Sept. 2011, that dropped by 33,400 jobs to 2,270,800 in Feb. 2012.

NDP Finance Critic Bruce Ralston questioned Clark's manipulation of employment figures. "I think what she's trying to do is roll back a couple years from the bottom of the recession and claim at least part of those as job growth due to the plan," he said. "That just isn't true."

It doesn't make sense to claim retroactive success for the plan, he said. "When jobs go up the premier claims credit. When jobs go down it's all due to world economic pressures," he said. "It's like [jobs minister] Pat Bell taking credit for the Lions winning the grey cup, but not for the Canucks losing on Saturday night. They take credit for the up side but don't own the down side."

Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee’s Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria. Find him on Twitter or reach him here.