Biden on Track To Do Something No Other President Achieved

Joe Biden is on the verge of making history: If job creation continues on its current trajectory through January, he will be the first president under whom the economy added jobs every month he was in office.

Biden touted his administration’s employment record in a speech Thursday to the Economic Club of Washington. D.C. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy has added jobs every month since Biden took office. The last time the number of jobs decreased was in December 2020, while former President Donald Trump was still in office.

The trend in jobs over the last few years has been shaped by the pandemic as well as policy. Employers laid off more than 20 million people in the early days of COVID-19 but soon began re-hiring. The job rebound came alongside an unwelcome burst of inflation starting in late 2021, and in the Fed began raising interest rates to combat it the following year. Many experts at the time predicted the Fed’s rate hikes would subdue inflation but cause a recession and tank the job market.

Economists have credited policies by Biden and Trump for stoking the job market in the wake of the pandemic. Massive pandemic relief bills signed into law by both administrations gave cash to employers and households, allowing people to continue spending money despite the wave of layoffs. Those same relief bills may also have contributed to the inflation surge that started in late 2021.

Can the Streak Continue?

Economists debate whether the recent job-winning streak can continue. A recession is still nowhere in sight, but job creation has slowed in recent months, raising concerns about the health of the labor market. The Fed’s rate cut last week was meant to prevent job losses. 

“It’s very hard to predict month to month, but the momentum on jobs under this president has been extremely solid, and I’m confident it will remain so,” Jared Bernstein, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview with Investopedia. “It’s true that payroll employment growth has slowed but you’d expect that, given the breakneck pace that was occurring when the President took office.”

Biden’s historical achievement would come with an asterisk. Barack Obama’s second term in office, from 2013 to 2017, was an unbroken streak of job creation, the first since records began in 1939. However, the economy lost jobs during Obama’s first term, which encompassed the Great Recession. Biden therefore would be the first president never to have presided over job losses at any point during his tenure, but Obama was the first to have a four-year term of straight employment gains.