Debunking Biden’s “Job Creation” Lie

How the president cherry-picks statistics and erases context to take credit

President Joe Biden has one nugget of misinformation that he simply loves to share: the idea that he’s doing a great job.

Let’s consider this particular piece of propaganda distributed by the White House:

The White House @WhiteHouse

When President Biden took office, millions were unemployed and there was no vaccine available. In the last 15 months, the economy has created 8.3M jobs and the unemployment rate stands at 3.6% — the fastest decline in unemployment to start a President's term ever recorded.

Biden’s administration has an unpleasant habit. Occasionally, they will draw back the curtains, peer outside and (through the fiery chaos) cherry-pick certain statistics out of the ether. After hastily closing the curtains again to hide from reality, they rush over to the sink, scrub away any and all context, and then celebrate the statistic as if it occurred in a vacuum as a result of Biden’s masterful leadership.

However, as our fact-checking overlords constantly inform us, context matters. In this case, it matters a lot, because the context is the entirely voluntary economic suicide committed largely by Democratic Party mayors and governors — as well as, it must be said the federal government under former President Donald Trump — with the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic used as an excuse.

First, let’s consider the unemployment rate. In February 2020, on the eve of disaster, the unemployment rate was 3.5%, having generally declined from a high of 10% following the Great Recession.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Then, COVID-19 exploded onto the scene. Americans — again, mostly in Democrat-run cities and states — were locked in their homes for months on end, while countless businesses were forced to shut down. Made worse by the fact that both federal, state and local governments incentivized unemployment by spraying cash in every direction like Hunter Biden in a strip club, unemployment rocketed to a high of 14.7% in April 2020.

However, by the end of Trump’s administration, the unemployment rate dropped to 6.4% — roughly equivalent to mid-way through Obama’s second term. And in the months that followed, with Biden in the White House, the political benefit of economically crippling the country diminished, and so cities and states began to open up.

The result? An unemployment rate of 3.6% in April 2022 — basically where we were right before the COVID-19 pandemic. So, in terms of unemployment, Biden has done nothing.