Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, reiterated the claim that President Biden has created 15 million new jobs during a House Budget Committee hearing.
White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young repeated a common refrain from the Biden administration that several fact-checkers have called misleading or lacking context.
Young said during Thursday’s hearing on the administration’s $7.3 trillion budget that President Biden has created 15 million jobs and unemployment has reached its lowest level in 50 years over the last two years.
“I understand why people don’t want to give the president credit for creating 15 million jobs when unemployment is at an all-time low in 50 years. … I understand the grandstanding,” Young said during from questioning by Rep. Bob Good, R-Va. “But if you want to do something about the border… there was a bill right before Congress.”
“But we choose to come to rooms like this to talk about the budget in question,” she continued.
Although about 15 million jobs have been created since Biden took office, according to several fact-checking media outlets, taking credit for this record is not so straightforward.
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Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. (Greg Nash/Pool/AFP/File/Getty Images)
Snopes reported Thursday that Biden’s claim is a “mixture” of truth and falsehood.
According to the fact-checking outlet, early data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the number of employed people fell from about 142.9 million in January 2021, when Biden took office, to about 157.8 million in February 2024, marking a significant increase in the working population. 14.9 million jobs.
However, the outlet said this apparent growth could be “misleading” without considering the broader context. Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the number of jobs stood at 152.3 million in February 2020. Over the following two months, however, this number fell by 21.9 million , to reach 130.4 million.
According to Factcheck.orgEven though the Biden administration has created just under 15 million new jobs, that figure also falls far short of the highest rate of job growth ever achieved by any president during this period.
And a Washington Post analysis of Biden’s State of the Union address this month noted that he compared employment figures from the first three years of his term with the full four-year terms of presidents previous ones. The outlet also reported that the comparison was “misleading” due to its lack of context. The Post’s analysis says uncertainties remain about what might happen in the final year of his term that could influence the final jobs number — just as the COVID-19 pandemic erased job gains former President Trump’s jobs.
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President Biden delivers the State of the Union address on March 7. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Biden’s $7.3 trillion budget plan, which he unveiled this month, includes proposals to raise taxes on corporations and high-income households. It calls for about $5 trillion in tax increases in total, which the White House said would be split equally between businesses and the top 2 percent of earners.
He also aims to advance his progressive policies, such as dedicating $8 billion over 10 years to the American Climate Corps and $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, which aims to help developing countries combat climate change.
The budget proposal also includes $1.8 billion to boost development programs in STEM fields that emphasize diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
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A job seeker attends a job fair in Long Beach, California on January 9. (Eric Thayer/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
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Congressional leaders are beginning to discuss the road map for funding for fiscal year 2025 even as negotiations continue on how to fund the remainder of fiscal year 2024, which began October 1, 2023.
Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.
