(RepublicanInformer.com)- In a weird twist of fate, the left-wing Washington Post called out a tweet published by Joe Biden’s handlers claiming that he has “the strongest record of growing manufacturing jobs in modern history,” according to Just the News. What’s with politicians claiming they have the best of anything in “modern history” so often these days?
Fact-checker Glenn Kessler flagged the tweet as “misleading” and awarded it two “Pinocchios.” In a strong response, Kessler breaks down data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, writing that a president’s decisions and laws can create jobs, but it does so over time.
“But it is hard to disentangle the importance of those factors from broader economic forces that are beyond a president’s control,” Kessler writes. “That’s why it’s often misleading to measure job creation by presidential term—an artificial metric beloved by presidents and the public alike.”
Kessler concludes by saying that comparing Biden’s 19 months with presidents who served four to eight years is “as silly as Trump’s unemployment claim during his 2020 State of the Union address.”
Kessler writes that he assumed that the tweet was comparing 19-month periods of different presidents, hence why the tweet concluded with “right now.” Under Biden, since taking office 630,000 manufacturing jobs have been gained, or 5.2%, from February 2020 to August 2021.
“That’s a pretty good record, but it was topped by Richard M. Nixon. From February 1972 to August 1973, more than 1.3 million manufacturing jobs were added, or 7.6 percent. Given that Biden was a senator back in 1972, we would have thought this was still ‘modern history,’ “Kessler writes.
Apparently not.
This convoluted way to judge job creation is out of whack because it is grossly misleading. The average of monthly job creation cannot be accurately put into context, or determined to be worse or better, when compared with previous presidencies because it is not taking into account the full term. As Kessler writes, “a lot could change in the next two-plus years.”
