Biden Admin Compares Current Economy To Trump’s First Year

White House chief of staff Ronald Klain misleadingly compared the number of jobs created during former President Trump’s first year to the number of jobs created during President Biden’s first five months on Friday, the day after the White House embarrassingly claimed the “Biden economic plan is working.”
Klain, citing a January 2018 Washington Post article that showed how much better Trump’s economy performed in its first year compared to his predecessors, decided to tweet, “Trump’s first-year jobs record: 1.8 million new jobs. Biden’s first FIVE months: 3 million new jobs.”

Trump's first year jobs record: 1.8 million new jobs.

Biden's first FIVE months: 3 million new jobs.https://t.co/bEH1fFpFec

— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) July 2, 2021

For some reason, Klain neglected to mention that the jobs added during Biden’s first five months were added as a result of the ending of the pandemic and have been consistently less than economists have projected as a result of Biden’s policies. For example, after Biden passed his American Rescue Plan which increased the payments people would receive for staying unemployed, the economy added nearly 750,000 jobs less than expected. Forbes reported, “The United States added 266,000 jobs in April, according to data released by the Labor Department Friday—much worse than the 1 million job gains economists expected and far fewer than the 916,000 jobs added in March, indicating that the long-tepid labor market recovery is slowing down again even as stocks and corporate earnings rip higher.”

“Some economists say, employers, particularly in the restaurant and entertainment industry, have been struggling to find workers because Biden’s relief package which included extended pandemic benefits for the unemployed, is deterring some workers from returning to their old job or seeking out a new position,” NBC News wrote in May 2021, adding, “Bank of America estimates that for those who were earning less than $32,000 a year before the pandemic, unemployment pays more than their former job. And, the bank estimates, that could keep 1 million people out of the workforce.”

In comparison to the consistent underperformance of the Biden economy, the Trump economy consistently overperformed. In just one example, a Wall Street Journal article wrote, “Before Mr. Trump took office in January 2017, the Congressional Budget Office forecast the creation of only two million jobs by this point. The economy has in fact created seven million jobs.”