Claim: Over 400 jobs were created by President Joe Biden

Question

The White House Instagram account posted a chart displaying the number of jobs created by President Joe Biden compared to six former presidents. The chart showed that Joe Biden created an average of 400 jobs per month. The source listed in the post is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Answer 1

The above claim states that over 400 jobs were created by President Joe Biden according to the cited Instagram post. The Instagram post indicates that over 400,000 jobs were created monthly on average, and it cites the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The U.S. Department of Labor summarizes a part of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics saying this: "With 12.1 million jobs added since President Biden took office... monthly average of 356,000 jobs over the past three months...." It has been around 28-29 months since Biden took office, so 12,000,000/28 is around 428,000, which would be over 400,000 total. 

However, since the #s are so general (ie 12.1 million), and since we don't have information about when the jobs were created (2021 vs. 2023), it's misleading to say that Biden creates an average of 400,000 per month consistently. 

Lastly, it depends on whether "creation" includes "recovery" - during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, unemployment skyrocketed, but in 2021, "The U.S. is currently experiencing a strong economic recovery, with 5.7% real growth in 2021 and 6.6 million Americans returning to work under President Biden." Many jobs were recovered in 2021 with the rollout of vaccinations. 

Comments

I appreciate how you included the idea of recovery within this answer, and how that could have had a large affect on job increase.

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I like the nuance you provided in your answer, such as by mentioning that the employment increase could be due to recovery, and that we are not sure what year these statistics are from.

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I really appreciate the fact that you really focused on the down to the wire facts. It is always nice to see that you included a percentage growth. Nice!

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Thank you for the well structured answer with good faith explanations of the nuances necessary to mention when analyzing this sort of topic/claim.

Answer 2

This statement is somewhat true, and actually underestimates the amount of jobs Biden has created. Just last month, 339,000 jobs were created by him. Since he took office, 13 million jobs have been created. Let's assume this was the total amount of jobs he created over this four year term, which is 48 months. 13 million divided by 48 yields a much higher number than 400, proving this fact is somewhat true and too low of a number.  

Here is a statement from Biden himself, 'We learned this morning that the economy created 339,000 jobs last month. We have now created over 13 million jobs since I took office. That is more jobs in 28 months than any President has created in an entire 4-year term."  This statement can be found on The White House website. 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/02/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-may-jobs-report/

Comments

I appreciate how you mention that this claim is actually underestimated. I feel like this is an important distinction.

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good for Joe!  I wonder what could be the reason for the amount of jobs that have been created in the past 3 or so years/

Answer 3

Evidence points to this being true, if exaggerated. Another statement from the president I found on the White House website states that a total of 13.2 million jobs have been added since Biden took office. While it is correct that there have been more jobs added and filled during Biden’s presidency, it does not account for the people who lost jobs and stopped working during the COVID pandemic, so the numbers being significantly higher during his term is to be expected and does not necessarily speak to his presidency being more efficient at building employment than that of other presidents’.

“Our economy added more than 200,000 jobs last month—for a total of 13.2 million jobs since I took office.That's more jobs added in two and a half years than any president has ever created in a four-year term."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/07/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-june-jobs-report/

Comments

Hi,
I found this very informative. You gave a clear answer with other information to add to it as well, which was very interesting.

Answer 4

The claim above states that Biden has created on average 400 jobs a month while in his term of being president. The Instagram post showed a histogram of different presidents and their rates of jobs created during their terms based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics. According to the whitehouse.gov they states that " our economy added more than 200,000 jobs last month- for a total of 13.2 million jobs since I took office." If we take the 13.2 million and divide it by 48 months (the number of months in his term) we would get 275,000. This means that this is true and actually a much lower amount that what the numbers calculate.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/07/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-june-jobs-report/#:~:text=This%20is%20Bidenomics%20in%20action,in%20a%20four%2Dyear%20term.

Comments

How would you rate the claim?

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Hello! On the instagram post, the numbers are laid out on a bar graph and while it states 400, the label was thousands, so the number is actually 400,000

Answer 5

The article criticizes President Joe Biden's claim that he personally "created" 12 million "new jobs" during his time in office. The author argues that most of these jobs were a result of the economy recovering from the massive job losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The article also compares actual job numbers with pre-pandemic projections, highlighting that the increase in jobs falls far short of Biden's claim.

https://www.aei.org/opportunity-social-mobility/the-presidents-latest-bogus-job-creation-claims/

Answer 6

This statement is very misleading and exaggerated. According to the Budget Committee of the US, 72 percent of all jobs that were created since 2021 (or since President Joe Biden became president) were jobs that were recovered. While this is still a good action that happened, it is important to note the difference between created jobs and recovered jobs. These jobs were already created years ago, but since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down a lot of jobs, they were gone during that time. So, President Joe Biden has recovered those jobs, which then counted towards the number of jobs he "created," which is simply untrue. This was an exaggerated statement.

https://budget.house.gov/press-release/fact-check-biden-misleads-on-job-creation-statistics

Answer 7

The claim presented in this post was that President Joe Biden has created an average of 400,000 jobs per month. This claim comes from a chart posted by the official White House Instagram verified page. The instagram post accurately cited the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

According to The White House government website, "Our economy has added 200,000 jobs over the last month- for a total of 13.2 million jobs since I took office." President Biden took office in January 2021, so that would be 33 months since today. 13.2 million jobs divided by 33 would be on average 400,000 jobs per month. Obviously, this source is swayed towards those they are mentioning, so I am giving this rating a misleading rate. 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/07/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-june-jobs-report/