Fact check: Biden makes misleading claim about job-creation estimate
Biden said in Michigan that, earlier this year, “a Wall Street outfit called Moody’s projected that the investments in these bills could help our economy create an additional 2 million jobs per year, every year. Two million per year. That’s going to bte transformative.”
On Friday, Biden omitted the word “help.” This time, he said that Moody’s Analytics projected that the bills would produce “an additional 2 million jobs per year.”
Zandi said of Biden’s words: “I would say they were incomplete. Or not well explained.”
What Moody’s found
Here’s the problem with Biden’s description of the Moody’s data from July.
When Biden says that Moody’s found his bills would create “an additional 2 million jobs per year,” and especially when he emphasizes the “every year” as he did in Michigan, he makes it sound like Moody’s found that the passage of the bills would result in 10 million more jobs after five years than would exist if the bills didn’t pass, or 20 million more jobs after 10 years than would exist if the bills didn’t pass.
But that’s not what Moody’s found.
To look at the Moody’s report a different way: Moody’s found that the economy would add 12 million jobs between the first quarter of 2022 and the last quarter of 2031 if the two new bills were passed, or add 9.9 million jobs if the two bills weren’t passed. That’s a gain of 2.1 million jobs over this period.
So what was Biden talking about when he spoke of Moody’s projecting an additional 2 million jobs “per year, every year”?
The annual average, the White House said.
The White House official noted that Moody’s found that, on average, in the years from 2022 through 2031, there would be nearly 2 million extra people employed with the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package than if these bills did not pass.
The White House math
Here’s how the White House calculated the average.
Moody’s found that in 2022, there would be 150.8 million people employed if the two bills were passed or 150.5 million people employed if the bills were not passed. That’s a difference of 300,000 jobs.
Then, in 2023, there would be 153 million people employed if the two bills were passed versus 152.1 million people employed if they were not passed. That’s a difference of 900,000 jobs.
In 2024, the difference would be 1.5 million. In 2025, it would be 2.2 million. In 2026, it would be 2.5 million. In 2027, it would rise to its highest point, 2.6 million. Then it would be 2.4 million in 2028, 2.3 million in 2029 and again in 2030, and 2.2 million in 2031.
If you take the average of these annual differences from 2022 to 2031, you get 1.9 million. That’s close to the “2 million” number Biden used.
Still, Biden did not explain that the “2 million” figure was the product of this kind of calculation.
Final analysis
If the President wants to communicate that, on average over the next decade, Moody’s found there would be about 2 million more people employed if his bills are passed than if his bills aren’t passed, he can say that explicitly.
Zandi told CNN that a bill smaller than $3.5 trillion would have a smaller jobs impact than the one projected in the Moody’s report.