President Joe Biden has repeatedly touted the country’s “job recovery” since he took office, even declaring earlier this week that his administration’s efforts “created the greatest job recovery in American history.”
Economists and fact checkers, however, are unconvinced that Biden played much of a role in the numbers.
The U.S. plummeted into a recession in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a swiftness not seen since the Great Depression, the Congressional Research Service later found. Since then, restrictions imposed as a result of the pandemic have continued to loosen — allowing Americans to head back to jobs they essentially already have. For the White House, this “job recovery” has been a talking point, and an example of success.
In March, Politifact rated a similar Biden comment — in which he declared that the economy created “more jobs in one year than ever before in the history of the United States of America” — as “half-true.” The fact-check noted that Biden “has a point,” but continued on to explain how the president’s declaration lacked key context.
“… As the nation’s population has grown, so has the number of jobs. Using the annual percentage increase is a better way to make comparisons across the 80-plus years for which data is available. Using that metric, 2021 put up strong numbers but did not set an all-time record,” Politifact wrote, adding that comparing numbers to pre-pandemic levels, taking into account the timing and noting that other factors outside of a presidency play key roles.
Steven Pociask, an economist expert at The American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research, and Brian Riedl, a senior fellow focused in part on economic policy at the Manhattan Institute, were even more critical of Biden’s claims. Both argued to the Daily Caller that the job recovery simply came about due to COVID-19 restrictions being lifted.
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04.26.2024