Biden Attempts to Tout Job Numbers, Gets Fact-Checked Hard by Musk’s New Twitter Feature
“There you go again” was a line Ronald Reagan famously employed against then-President Jimmy Carter in their presidential debate in 1980, and he would be able to use it just as effectively against President Joe Biden and his fanciful claims now.
Biden and the White House staff, presumably, just couldn’t help themselves in embellishing the administration’s jobs record after a good January jobs report was released Friday.
“In my first year as president, we saw the largest one-year growth in women’s participation in the labor force in nearly 30 years,” Biden tweeted.
However, Twitter users responded employing the new “Community Notes” function, to give the 46th president’s claims some important context.
“By Jan 2021, the US had only recovered 57% of overall jobs lost during COVID, leading to sizeable ‘growth’ in Biden’s first year,” one note read.
Additionally, the “total number of women working now remains slightly less than pre-COVID,” and that the “labor force participation rate for women remains much lower.”
In my first year as president, we saw the largest one-year growth in women’s participation in the labor force in nearly 30 years.
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 2, 2023
Interestingly, the Community Notes adding context to Biden’s tweet appear to have been taken down. However, images of Biden’s tweet being, effectively, fact-checked, still exist online. And they appear to be making a difference, as this one Twitter user noted:
Do you think Biden has hurt the economy?
Biden tweets this & I decided to read the “context” the first source actually shows that we are higher now than before covid. The 2nd source says that we have slightly less women working, the actual number is 50. The 3rd source shows that it’s less than half a % from pre-covid. pic.twitter.com/m1b7XU6s8h
— B-158 Jr.?? (@ThiccBoBaeggins) February 3, 2023
Others just found the entire ordeal funny:
Twitter’s added context on Biden’s tweets is always golden pic.twitter.com/8NVehbKgf7
— Bobby Connelly (@Big_bob_guy) February 3, 2023
The Federal Reserve of St. Louis reported that as of January 2023, 74,952,000 women were in the workforce compared to 74,999,000 in February 2020 prior to the COVID lockdowns.
The nation’s overall population is approximately about 3 million more now than in 2020, so even if the total number of women employed was the same, it should be substantially higher.
Further, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force participation rate for women was 57.9 percent in February 2020. and it currently stands 57 percent. So it still hasn’t fully recovered.
The overall labor participation rate last month was 62.4 percent. In February 2020, it was 63.4 percent.
The U.S. labor market unleashed a burst of hiring in January, but participation in the work force remains well below prepandemic levels, which is driving up wages and contributing to inflation. https://t.co/w4pDzeeOet pic.twitter.com/pVwnqLP8Lp
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 3, 2023
Biden also tweeted, “This morning, we learned the economy created 517,000 jobs in January. We also learned we did better last year than previously thought.”
“Add that up, and we’ve created 12 million jobs since I took office. That’s the two strongest years of job growth in history – by a long shot,” he added.
This morning, we learned the economy created 517,000 jobs in January. We also learned we did better last year than previously thought.
Add that up, and we’ve created 12 million jobs since I took office.
That’s the two strongest years of job growth in history – by a long shot.
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 3, 2023
Well, that needs some important context too.
Those jobs, in large measure, don’t really represent new jobs created under Biden. It took until this past September for the number of jobs in the U.S. to reach the pre-pandemic level it was at under former President Donald Trump, according to FactCheck.org.
Robert Frick with Navy Federal Credit Union told Marketplace late last summer there is still much ground to be made up.
“Yeah, we’re back to the pre-pandemic level,” he said. “But if you look to the pre-pandemic trend, we’re 4 or 5 million jobs below that.”
Biden also told some real doozies Friday while touting his jobs report, with his outgoing top economic adviser Brian Deese flanking him.
A reporter asked him, “Do you take any blame for inflation?”
“Do I take any blame for inflation? No,” Biden said.
“Why not?” the reporter followed up.
“Because it was already there when I got here, man. Remember what the economy was like when I got here? Jobs were hemorrhaging, inflation was rising, we weren’t manufacturing a damn thing here. We were in real economic difficulty.”
.@POTUS: Do I take any blame for inflation? No … Because it was already there when I got here, man. Remember what the economy was like when I got here? Jobs were hemorrhaging, inflation was rising, we weren’t manufacturing a damn thing here. We were in real economic difficulty. pic.twitter.com/U7WzVaXvOj
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 3, 2023
When Trump left office in January 2021, the inflation rate was 1.7 percent.
The inflation rate in December was 6.5 percent. That is at least a decrease from the 40-year-high of 9.1 percent in June following a Democratic deficit spending spree and Biden’s decision to curtail domestic oil production.
Wages grew at 4.4 percent in January, which was over two percent less than inflation meaning Americans’ buying power continues to decrease under Biden.
“Over the past two years — the entirety of Biden’s presidency — wages have cumulatively risen by 10 percent while inflation has risen cumulatively by 14 percent. So wages have trailed inflation for this period as well,” Politifact’s Louis Jacobson reported.
Jobs were not “hemorrhaging” when Biden took office, nor was the economy in bad shape.
When the Democrat became president in January 2021, the economy was well on its way to recovery. The unemployment rate had dropped from a pandemic high of 14.7 percent in April 2020 to 6.3 percent. It’s 3.4 percent now.
During Trump’s last full quarter in office in 2020, the gross domestic product grew 4.3 percent.
In the quarter of 2021, before any of Biden’s policies would have had a chance to take effect, the economy grew 6.4 percent.
However, by 2022, the economy dipped into a recession with two quarters of negative economic growth. In the fourth quarter of last year, the GDP grew 2.9 percent, which is significantly below the rate when Trump left office.
With Trump’s tax policies still largely in place and a Republican House now in charge, businesses now have the assurance the Biden far-left agenda is stymied at least for two years.
Now the recovery can really take off.
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