Biden Deceptively Says US Was Losing Jobs Under Trump Before He Came to Office
If President Joe Biden is known for anything, it’s stretching the truth (even more than that) on a fairly regular basis, and he was at it again on Monday in Philadelphia.
During a speech commemorating Labor Day, Biden said, “It wasn’t that long ago we were losing jobs in this country. In fact, the guy who held this job before me was just one of two presidents in history … one of two presidents in history that left office with fewer jobs in America than when he got elected office.”
“By the way, do you know who the other one was? Herbert Hoover. Isn’t that kind of coincidental?” the president added.
“Look, but we’re turning things around because of you,” Biden said.
So his message was, “The economy, and particularly the jobs market, was bad under Donald Trump, but I turned it around.”
False!
President Biden: “It wasn’t that long ago we were losing jobs in this country. In fact, the guy who held this job before me was just one of two presidents in history […] that left office with fewer jobs in America than when he got elected office.”
President Biden on Monday… pic.twitter.com/YJHPRlrGT4
— The Hill (@thehill) September 4, 2023
Biden and the Democrats love to throw around the silly statistic about the nation losing jobs overall under Trump, but that, of course, ignores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, the most severe of which tended to be in Democrat-led states.
The truth is that the economy was well on its way to recovery when Trump left office in January 2021. The unemployment rate had dropped from a pandemic high of 14.7 percent in April 2020 to 6.3 percent in January 2021. It’s at 3.8 percent now.
During Trump’s first three years in office, employers added 6.7 million new jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to a 50-year low of 3.5 percent.
Biden claimed Monday that during his administration, twice as many jobs were created.
“In my first two years, I’ve created nearly 13.5 million jobs — more jobs in two years than any president has created in a four-year term,” he said.
#LABORDAY: During his Labor Day speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, President Biden touted “Bidenomics” to union members, stating, “In my first two years, I’ve created nearly 13.5 million jobs, more jobs in two years than any president has created in a four-year term.” pic.twitter.com/hOhLMlAOFd
— Forbes (@Forbes) September 4, 2023
That statistic has been fact-checked multiple times and judged false.
Most of the jobs Biden brags about don’t really represent new ones. It took until September 2022 for the number of jobs in the U.S. to reach the pre-pandemic level under Trump, according to FactCheck.org.
About 10 million of the 13.5 million jobs he cited were needed to get the workforce back to where it was in February 2020.
Robert Frick with Navy Federal Credit Union told Marketplace last summer there is still much ground to be made up.
“Yeah, we’re back to the pre-pandemic level,” he said. “But if you look to the pre-pandemic trend, we’re 4 or 5 million jobs below that.”
The labor participation rate — those of working age who have jobs — as of August was 62.8 percent.
Under Trump, it was 63.3 percent in February 2020, the highest it had been since August 2013 under then-President Barack Obama.
And here’s further proof the economy was recovering, not ailing, when Biden took over: During Trump’s last full quarter in office in 2020, the gross domestic product grew at a healthy 4.3 percent.
In the first quarter of 2021, before any of Biden’s policies would have had a chance to take effect — like the inflationary $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan — the economy grew at 6.4 percent.
By comparison, in the quarter that ended in July, the growth rate was 2.4 percent.
The GDP rate fell during the first and second quarters last year, indicating the economy was in a recession.
With Trump’s tax policies still largely in place and a Republican House now in charge, businesses have the assurance Biden’s far-left high deficit spending, inflationary agenda is stymied for a two-year period and maybe more.
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