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Writer's picturejohn kepler

A misleading jobs claim is back

Biden made a version of the claim last week. In a slightly different form than the original, but that new form was misleading too

On May 2, we pointed out that, after early-April fact checks from CNN and others, Biden's team had stopped wrongly claiming or suggesting that economic firm Moody's Analytics found that the American Jobs Plan proposal would create 19 million jobs.


In his Thursday speech in Louisiana, Biden said, "All the economists, including the liberal as well as conservative think tanks, point out what we'll create when we pass this Jobs Plan -- we'll create up to 16 million good-paying jobs." And in the White House speech the day prior, Biden said, "You have Moody's talking about increasing it up to -- I don't know what the most recent one is -- 16 million new jobs."




Facts:

Biden was wrong when he suggested in Louisiana that liberal and conservative economists and think tanks all agree that the American Jobs Plan will create up to 16 million jobs; there is no consensus of any kind on how many jobs the plan will create. And contrary to Biden's suggestion at the White House, even Moody's did not say the plan would create up to 16 million jobs. Rather, Moody's estimated in May that the economy will create about 16.5 million jobs between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2030 if the American Jobs Plan is not passed, or create about 19.2 million jobs if Biden's plan is passed. In other words, Moody's found that the passage of the American Jobs Plan would produce 2.7 million additional jobs, not up to 16 million.

In fairness, Biden didn't explicitly say that the American Jobs Plan itself would create up to 16 million jobs; he said in Louisiana that "we'll create" up to 16 million many jobs when the plan is passed. This is why we don't call this version of the claim flatly false. But as in April, when Biden used a "19 million jobs" figure, the President's artful language last week led listeners toward an inaccurate conclusion -- Moody's says passing the Biden plan means 16 million more jobs! -- that is more favorable to him than the truth: Moody's says passing the Biden plan means 2.7 million more jobs.

Biden was more careful in his address to Congress in April. He said in that speech that the plan will create "millions" of jobs.

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