Fact check: Biden officials falsely describe jobs estimate
But some of these Biden officials have inaccurately described one of the figures they have made central to their sales pitch. And while Biden’s Friday description of this same figure was literally accurate, it was still pretty misleading by omission.
The White House official said Deese intended to say Moody’s found the infrastructure proposal would “help” create 19 million jobs, not that the proposal would itself create 19 million jobs. The Department of Transportation official said the same about Buttigieg.
“I should be precise about this,” Buttigieg said. “So Moody’s modeled a future, a scenario, where the American Jobs Plan is passed. And in that scenario, they see the American economy creating 19 million jobs. And that’s 2.7 (million) more than if this bill doesn’t pass. So the point is, this will contribute to a scenario where we create that many jobs, and millions of them are specifically attributable just to this plan.”
Moody’s estimated that the economy would have added about 15.7 million jobs between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2030 if the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief law had not been approved and if the infrastructure proposal never gets approved. In other words, Moody’s said that these two signature Biden plans would be responsible for about 3.3 million jobs above a baseline scenario in which there had been “no additional support” for the economy.
Biden’s language
Biden’s description of the “19 million” statistic was more correct than the ones offered by Deese and Buttigieg. But Biden’s language nonetheless invited listeners to come to an inaccurate understanding of what Moody’s concluded.
“They report that over the next decade they expect nonfarm payroll jobs … to be up by 19 million. Some of that is the Rescue Plan, some of that’s the Jobs Plan, some of that is underlying growth,” Bernstein said.
This article has been updated with comments made by Buttigieg and a Department of Transportation official after the article was initially published.
