As the U.S. economy kept on recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, it had gained 15.6 million jobs as of May 2024. However …
What's False:
About 9 million of those jobs were lost during the pandemic, so the net jobs gain from pre-pandemic levels was 6.2 million.
During the June 27, 2024, debate against former U.S. President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden claimed he had overseen a remarkable economic recovery and presided over a 15 million job increase since taking office in January 2021:
"We created 15,000 new jobs," Biden said in his opening statement, misstating the number.
"The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs, they're bounced back from the COVID," Trump retorted a few minutes later.
In February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S., 152.3 million people were employed. Two months later, that number had dropped by 21.9 million, to 130.4 million. By the time Trump left office, more than half of those jobs had been recovered.
It took 17 more months, until June 2022, for the U.S. economy to recover the remaining 9 million jobs lost during the pandemic. From that perspective, the actual net gain during the Biden administration was 6.2 million jobs as of February 2024, not 15.6 million. This is based on our calculations using numbers from the BLS . However 6.2 million jobs is still a higher average than what former President Barack Obama achieved during his two terms (a total of 11.6 million jobs , so about 5.8 million jobs per term), with more than six months left in Biden's term.
Signs of a Strong Economy
The data shows that the U.S. economy has been strong overall under Biden. For instance, the government reported that 272,000 jobs were added to the economy in May 2024, a number that surpassed the 180,000 that had been estimated, as we previously reported . Meanwhile, while the unemployment rate had remained under 4% for more than two years, something that hadn't happened since 1967 .
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