The administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden created jobs every month and was the first presidential administration to do so.
While government policies can contribute to job creation, and government jobs are counted in the monthly U.S. jobs data report, a presidential administration cannot force the private sector to hire workers, so a large portion of job creation is outside of the government’s control. It is more accurate to say that the economy at large added a certain number of jobs during a presidential administration. Further, 9 million of the jobs created under Biden were part of the recovery that followed the COVID-19 pandemic.
In January 2025, days before the end of his government mandate, former U.S. President Joe Biden posted on X that his administration had been the only one in history to create jobs every month (archived):
The post, which received 903,400 views as of this writing, also attracted replies. “In approximately 1 month from now, we will learn that it is a false report,” one said. “Liar!,” another one said. “Be gone already!!”
The claim, however, is true: Biden’s administration was the first since records began under which the economy added new jobs every month. Still, the claim required context.
A chart by the Saint Louis Federal Reserve, which publishes economic data from other government agencies, shows that, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics since it began to track employment data in 1939, Biden’s was the first administration (2021-2025) under which the economy added new jobs every month:
Even during Bill Clinton’s administration in the 1990s, under which the economy added 23 million jobs over eight years, the economy lost jobs on certain months. For example, it lost 44,000 jobs in March 1993 and 18,000 jobs in May 1995:
In contrast, the Biden administration saw new jobs created in the U.S. economy every month:
However, it is important to note that presidential administrations may not have much control over whether companies in the private sector hire more people. While government jobs represented a large portion of jobs in the economy when Biden left office (14.8%), the proportion of government jobs compared to the larger economy had dropped from when President Donald Trump first took office in 2017 (15.3%). This is according to BLS data on government jobs, which include local, state and federal government jobs.
Further, while the U.S. economy added jobs at an unprecedented rate during the first part of Biden’s mandate, about 9 million of them were the result of a “catch-up effect” that followed massive job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, which started during Trump’s first mandate. Snopes discussed this phenomenon in a June 2024 article. Further, Snopes gathered and analyzed historical data on U.S. jobs in a September 2024 article that compared job creation under Democratic and Republican administrations since 1945.
