Joe Biden’s Phony Jobs Claim And The Scourge Of Statism

Oh c’mon, man!

Politicians have always been braggarts and liars, but Sleepy Joe’s risible SOTU claim that he has “created” 12 million jobs takes the prize

Yes, according to the BLS, there were 12.104 million more nonfarm jobs in January 2023 than there were in January 2021. But fully 9.4 million of those, or nearly 80%, were “born-again” jobs.

And even those latter jobs, which were recovered after the devastating lockdown layoffs in the spring and summer of 2020, were not owing to Biden’s meandering around the White House. They were people put back to work by businesses large and small that finally had Dr. Fauci’s boot heel lifted from the back of their necks.

To be sure, Sleepy Joe is only the latest of a long line of President’s who have falsely taken credit for the product of natural market forces putting people back to work in cyclical recoveries or adding net new jobs on a long-term basis. The truth, however, is that about the only jobs presidents can actually create with the help of Congress are those held by Federal bureaucrats—jobs which overwhelmingly bring about a net reduction in sustainable growth and national wealth.

But as it happens, even when it comes to the ranks of Federal bureaucrats, Joe Biden has nothing to write home about. The January 2023 count of Federal jobs according to the BLS was 2,879,000, a figure which was actually -10,000 lower than the level of January 2021!

As shown by the chart below, the actual rise of mostly born-again jobs during Joe Biden’s 24 months in office were in the private sector (purple line). These jobs happened owing to market forces which are not at all attributable to the doddering old fool in the Oval Office.

Federal Government Versus Private Sector Jobs, January 2021 to January 2023

Needless to say, White House jobs math is always a case of liars figuring and figures lying, but the current case is especially egregious. To wit, owing to Donald Trump’s unforgivable delegation of open-ended power to Dr. Fauci and his Virus Patrol, the number of nonfarm payroll jobs plunged from 152.37 million at the pre-Covid peak in February 2020 to 130.40 million two months later in April.

As an aside, that was probably the one and only case where a president did actually have a big impact on jobs. In fact, the Donald destroyed a staggering 22 million paychecks in the spring of 2020 because it was he alone at the end of the day who let Fauci et. al. out of their bureaucratic cages.