Joe Biden delivered a Labor Day speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to union workers during the Annual Tri-State Labor Day Parade. In his speech, Biden criticized the Trump economy and emphasized the impact of “Bidenomics” on job creation.
“800,000 new manufacturing jobs, but you wouldn’t know from all the negative news you hear,” Biden intoned. “Well, we’re getting through this. One of the greatest job creation periods in American history. For real. That’s a fact.”
“And it wasn’t that long ago, we’re losing jobs in this country,” he went on. “In fact, the guy who held his job before me was just one of two presidents in history — but here’s an important point — one of two presidents left office with fewer jobs in America than when he got elected office.”
“By the way, you know who the other one was? Herbert Hoover. Isn’t that kind of coincidental?” he asked rhetorically.
“Look, but we’re turning things around because of you,” he added. “When the last guy was here, you were shipping jobs to China. Now we’re bringing jobs home from China.”
Steven Cheung, a seasoned spokesperson for Trump’s highly successful campaign, confidently fired back and ardently defended the remarkable record of the former president. With his unwavering dedication and astute communication skills, Cheung skillfully highlighted the accomplishments and achievements that defined the tenure of the esteemed leader.
“President Trump produced a booming economic recovery, and record low unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and women,” Cheung said. “Joe Biden is the destroyer of America’s jobs and continues to fuel runaway inflation with reckless big government spending. President Trump’s vision for America’s economic revival is lower taxes, bigger paychecks and more jobs for American workers.”
Fact checkers have highlighted that Biden’s criticisms of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, and his repeated claims about record job creation lack important context. The USA Today fact checker, for instance, has noted that experts consider Biden’s comparisons to Trump, although typical in politics, to be unjust.
“The post compares that number to the number of jobs Trump netted throughout his entire term, a figure determined by subtracting the total number of jobs when he entered office from the number of jobs when he left office,” the USA Today said about a similar boast.
“When Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, there were nearly 145.6 million employed Americans, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” the report continued. “By December 2020, his last full month in office, there were about 142.6 million total nonfarm employees — about 3 million fewer than when Trump took office.”
“Looking at the numbers alone, the claim is accurate,” the report added. “But experts say it’s a misleading way to compare the data.”
“It is a bit unconventional to compare net jobs over a 4-year period to a single one-month change in employment,” Mary Ann Bronson, an economics professor at Georgetown University, said. “The latter will always have much higher variance, be subject to seasonal fluctuations, and of course also to other short-run fluctuations (especially in the current health environment).”
“Bronson said a more meaningful analysis would address the unique circumstances of Trump’s time in office, such as net job creation under the Trump administration prior to the pandemic, how the first months of pandemic job losses compared to other countries and how much employment recovered in the U.S. compared to those countries,” the report noted.
The COVID response during the Trump presidency exhibited significant variation at the state level. The University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy conducted a report in 2021, analyzing the impact of the Covid recovery on state-level economics.
According to the CSPP analysis, states differed in terms of the percentage of jobs recovered. Initially, states with heavy lockdown measures faced a lag compared to states with a more relaxed approach. As of September 2021, the Carsey School of Public Policy provided a breakdown of the percentage of jobs recovered at the state level.
Industries severely affected by lockdowns, like tourism and food service, played a significant role in job recovery during the pandemic. The Biden administration has rebranded this as “created jobs,” according to the breakdown of ‘recovered jobs’ by job sector by the Carsey School of Public Policy as of September 2021.
Furthermore, Biden’s claims that his administration is ‘bringing jobs home from China’ that were purportedly lost under the Trump presidency comes with a major caveat.
“Foreign-born U.S. workers are now amounting to 160K jobs per month this year, rising 50K per month faster than in 2022, lifted by a surging foreign-born labor force participation rate,” the economic blog ZeroHedge noted, adding that “1.2 Million native-born workers lost their jobs, and were replaced with 668K foreign-born workers.”
In addition to the recovery of jobs under the Biden administration, it’s important to note a decrease of 85,000 full-time jobs in August. The Bureau of Labor Statistics consistently revises down job reports, even months after their initial release. Throughout 2023, the BLS has frequently revised down the initially reported numbers, often by tens of thousands of jobs.