Speaking at a disaster of a recent Democratic Party event in South Carolina, an event meant to serve as a reminder of his successful primary win there, one that was turned into a humiliating disaster by the whoppers he repeatedly told when trying to pat himself on the back, former President Biden tried claiming that it was he, rather than Trump, who fixed the economy.
In fact, President Joe Biden informed an audience in South Carolina that during his tumultuous time as commander-in-chief, his administration created a whopping 2.2 million jobs in 2024. Biden gave an address at an event to celebrate his win in the state during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. During his spiel, Biden said his administration delivered the lowest average unemployment rate in five decades in 2024 alone.
“We’re the lowest average unemployment rate in 50 years. In fact, in just my last year as President of the United States in 2024, we created just the last year 2.2 million additional jobs. You know how many jobs Trump’s created in his first year as president? 185,000 jobs total,” Biden went on to say to the crowd attending the event.
“That’s it. Of course, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Trump’s the only president other than Herbert Hoover who had fewer jobs when he left office than when he came into office. That’s the fact,” Biden added. Looking at data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), it appears the initial numbers showed that nonfarm payrolls went up by 2.2 million in 2024.
However, later benchmark revisions tied to unemployment insurance tax records told a different story. The figures were overstated, so the BLS revised the March 2025 level down by 862,000 and adjusted data back to April 2024. Media outlet Reuters reported that job growth numbers for the 12-month period ending in March 2025 had been overcounted by a significant margin, according to MSN.
Another report from the Wall Street Journal said that post-benchmark data indicated 2024 employment gains were much weaker than they were originally reported. Despite the wild claims by the former president, BLS initially reported that nonfarm jobs rose by 584,000 in 2025, but benchmark revisions later reduced that to 181,000.
The comparison Biden made completely ignored that a calendar-year total for 2025 runs from January through December, while a president’s first year in office spans from the day of his inauguration until the following year, making his claim misleading. And this is far from the first time Biden has made a flub regarding job numbers.
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In 2023, then-President Biden flubbed job numbers he said he created during his first two years in office while giving a speech to a labor union. According to Fox News, Biden told the crowd, “Folks, look around at our economic plan that’s working. We’ve created more than 12,000 brand-new jobs in two years. That’s more than any president in American history has created in four years, in four years.”
Fox News’ report on the flub stated that Biden likely meant to say 12 million jobs, which, at the time, was a number his administration liked to throw around, despite Republicans stating the jobs were just ones being added back following the COVID pandemic. He made a similar gaffe in March 2023 while talking about the February jobs report.
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