On May 12th, the White House sent out a tweet. It claiming that when President Biden took office, there was no vaccine available. It also claimed Biden lead the fastest decline in unemployment in the start of a President’s term ever recorded.
Is that true? Let’s look at the facts.
First, the COVID-19 vaccine was approved for use (granted emergency use authorization) on Dec 11, 2020. Joe Biden received his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on live television on Dec 21, and his second dose of the vaccine on Jan 11, 2021. Also, more than a million doses of the vaccine were being administered each day by the time Biden was sworn in as POTUS on 20 January, 2021.
Rating: FALSE! Five Pinocchio! Pants on fire! The White House claim that there was no vaccine available at the start of Biden’s term is completely false! Biden was fully vaccinated, and over a million doses were being administered per day BEFORE Biden took office.
Next, let’s talk about jobs.
Just before the pandemic hit, the US unemployment rate was at 3.5%, and the employment rate was at 61%. The Unemployment Rate is the measure of how many people are looking for jobs, while the Employment Rate is a measure of how many Americans have jobs.
When the pandemic hit the US in early 2020, government ordered shut-downs and closures resulted in unemployment rates increasing from 3.5% to 14.7%, and a decrease in employment from 61% to 51%.
By the time Trump left office on 20 Jan 2021, the unemployment rates had dropped to 6.3% (an 8.4% drop), and the employment rate had bounced back to 57% (a 6% increase).
In the 15 months since Biden took office, unemployment has decreased by an additional 2.7%, and employment has increased by another 3%.
After the pandemic put millions of people out of work, Trump reduced unemployment by 8.4% in his last 9 months in office. Biden lowered unemployment by 2.7% in 15 months. Trump increased employment by 6 percentage points in 9 months. Biden increased employment by 3% in 15 months.
Rating: Mostly false. First, jobs recovery is not the same as job growth. When you allow businesses to reopen, you are not creating jobs, you are allowing people to go back to work. And, while it is true millions of people have gone back to work under Biden, more than twice that number returned to work under Trump.