(CNN) -- No issue has been hotter throughout the run-up to the election than jobs -- and both candidates took pains to tackle the issue during their first debate Wednesday at the University of Denver. "Over the last 30 months, we've seen 5 million jobs in the private sector created," Democratic incumbent Barack Obama said. The facts: In 2009, Obama's first full year in office, people in states across the country were losing their jobs at a startling clip. In Ohio, the unemployment rate was 10.6%. But over the next few years, the nation saw slow increases in employment in the retail, education and health care sectors. Today, most states are gaining jobs. The key swing state of Ohio now has a 7.2% unemployment rate.
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President Barack Obama says he created 5 million jobs
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Mitt Romney says 23 million people are out of work in the nation
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Employment figures could prove key to this race
What @placeholder did not say, however, was that the nation shed 4.3 million jobs during the early days of his term, and that the net gain since he took the oath of office in January 2009 is just 125,000 jobs.