On Friday, Joe Biden delivered remarks about the newly released jobs report, which showed 517,000 jobs in the month of January—crushing expectations.
Biden celebrated the news, claiming to have created 12 million jobs since he took office.
“That means we have created more jobs in two years than any presidential term, than any time, in two years,” he claimed.
Biden has been claiming to have created more jobs than any of his predecessors since his first year in office, which coincided with the reopening of the economy after the COVID shutdowns ended. However, the bulk of the jobs he claims to have “created” were actually primarily jobs lost during the pandemic shutdowns and not, as he has implied, newly created jobs. The United States did not recover the 25 million jobs lost during the pandemic until July 2022. However, much of that recovery came from a small number of red states, as most states were still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels.
According to Tim McMahon, the editor at UnemploymentData.com, employment is only 1.876 million above pre-pandemic levels—a far cry from the 12 million jobs Biden claims to have created. The civil population has also increased by roughly 6.3 million since the pandemic began, meaning those new jobs represent an even smaller share of the population.
PREVIOUS: Biden Is a Liar; He Didn’t Create Any Jobs in 2021
Despite the positive jobs report, inflation remains a major problem facing the American economy, and when asked about inflation by a reporter, Biden accepted no responsibility for it.
“Do you take any blame for inflation, Mr. President?” a reporter asked.
“Am I taking blame for inflation? No,” Biden replied.
“Why not?”
“Because it was already there when I got here, man,” Biden claimed. “Remember what the economy was like when I got here? Jobs were hemorrhaging. Inflation was rising.”
Biden falsely claims inflation was high when he took office.pic.twitter.com/zJeXF38IEk
— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) February 3, 2023
But Biden’s claims are, to use his own word, malarkey.
Biden claimed that jobs were “hemorrhaging” when he took office, but this is belied by data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which shows that the pandemic employment crash bottomed out in April 2020 and was trending upward well before he took office.
As for Biden’s claims about inflation, the inflation rate in January 2021, when he took office, was a mere 1.4%, which was on par with the average inflation rate of 1.2% for all of 2020 and was the lowest monthly inflation rate of Biden’s entire presidency. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June of 2022.
Our Survey Says…
Biden’s claims that, when he took office, “jobs were hemorrhaging” and “inflation was rising” are false.
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