For months now, Joe Biden has claimed to have the best economic record of any president in recent history and credited his economic policies.
“We’ve created more jobs in the first eight months of my administration than any president in American history — total number of jobs created,” Biden during a CNN town hall back in October.
Variations of this claim have been a constant talking point for Biden and the White House.
“We added 6.4 million jobs last year. That’s the most jobs in any calendar year by any president in history,” Biden said in a tweet earlier this month. “How? The American Rescue Plan got the economy off its back and humming again — and 200 million vaccinations got Americans out of their homes and back to work.”
We added 6.4 million jobs last year.
That’s the most jobs in any calendar year by any president in history.
How? The American Rescue Plan got the economy off its back and humming again — and 200 million vaccinations got Americans out of their homes and back to work.
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 7, 2022
The White House also tweeted that “Under President Biden, the economy has created more jobs per month than under any other President – ever.”
Under President Biden, the economy has created more jobs per month than under any other President – ever. pic.twitter.com/yAQING1tT8
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 7, 2022
But the claim, and the accompanying graph, are laughable. While it’s true that the economy added these jobs, they have nothing to do with Biden or his policies. Instead, these are primarily jobs lost during the pandemic shutdowns of 2020 that have since come back due to the lockdowns ending.
“The economy — and this is an important point — hasn’t added one single job from the 2019 high-water mark. Not one,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said on CNBC last week.
“All the jobs that we have seen gained are recovered jobs that were lost. We’re not yet producing new jobs,” she explained. “In fact, we’re still about nearly 4 million jobs short. So, these wage gains are coming on top of a shrinking workforce, and it’s not being fueled by productivity enhancements.”
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According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, she’s absolutely right. The economy is still 3.6 million jobs short of pre-pandemic levels. Richardson also pointed out that wage gains are a false metric, as they are mainly being driven right now by labor shortages.
Even Politifact has called out Biden for his misleading claims, noting back in October that job levels were still below pre-pandemic levels and that Biden took office in the middle of an economic upswing. Politifact pointed out that “what phase of expansion the economy is in at the precise moment of their inauguration can play a big role in how a president’s first months go economically,” and therefore “Biden’s comparison to his predecessors is not really apples-to-apples.”
Another factor to consider is that Joe Biden promised that his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that passed last March would mean job growth that would outperform CBO estimates for 2021.
It didn’t.
“While the president is right that millions of jobs returned this year, as was widely expected following unprecedented pandemic layoffs in 2020, the latest jobs report shows that gain doesn’t match nonpartisan projections for job growth resulting from the policies Biden inherited,” explains Matt Weidinger of the American Enterprise Institute. “That also means the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Democrats enacted in March 2021 has not created any of the additional four million jobs supporters promised it would this year.”
In other words, had Biden done nothing, the economy would have created more jobs.
At this point, the best Biden can hope for is for his economic record to not be as bad as Barack Obama’s. Obama took office in the middle of a recession as well, but it took seventy-seven months for employment to return to pre-recession levels, making Obama’s recovery the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression.