Though her press briefing performances are often what draw conservative scorn, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre’s X (formerly Twitter) posts are nothing to write home about either, as a series of community notes corrections about her jobs claims made painfully obvious.
Particularly, the community notes corrections came from her claim that the Biden Administration had “created” a massive number of jobs since Biden became president, a statistic lacking context because many of those jobs were not “created” but rather recovered from the Covid lockdowns and job market chaos that those caused.
In one tweet, KJP claimed that over 14 million jobs had been created under the Biden Administration, saying, “Today, we got more good economic news. 199,000 jobs created last month. A total of 14.1 million created under President Biden. That’s Bidenomics in action.” Stepping in to add some context, community notes added, “It is well documented that nearly 72% of job gains since 2021 are simply jobs recovered that were lost during the pandemic, not created.” Dinesh D’Souza, mocking her fact check, said, “She lies. Gets busted. Then lies again.”
The House Budget Committee, explaining what is wrong with the statistic cited by the Biden Administration in a June report, said, “Nearly 72 percent of all job gains since 2021 were simply jobs that were being recovered from the pandemic, not new job creation. In fact, when looking at today’s economy compared to pre-pandemic levels, employment is up only by 3.7 million. On the other hand, prior to the pandemic, job creation under President Trump was 6.7 million—3 million more jobs than the current President.”
KJP’s tweet was similar to one Biden posted that was fact-checked. In it, the president’s account said, “The economy created 199,000 jobs in November, for a total of over 14 million jobs since I took office. That’s more than 14 million additional Americans who know the dignity and peace of mind that comes with a paycheck.” Adding context there, the community notes said, “According to the US Bureau of Labor statistics, only 3.2M jobs were created, with the other 11M jobs being recovered post-COVID.”
The House Budget Committee added that The labor force participation rate remains 0.7 percentage points lower under Biden than it was when President Trump was in office. When adjusting for population gains, nearly 2 million more Americans are on the sidelines today than they were during the previous Administration.
At the time, the Biden Administration was claiming, “President Biden and Congressional Democrats’ plan to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out, not the top down, is delivering for the American people. President Biden and Congressional Democrats have worked together to grow the economy and create a record number of jobs.”
It also claimed that the administration had “Created more than 13 million jobs; brought the unemployment rate below 4 percent four years before experts projected and kept it there for the longest period in more than 50 years; and achieved record low unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics, people with disabilities – and the lowest unemployment rate in 70 years for women.”
By The White House – P20230925CS-0917, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138651309
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