Biden Stays On Track For Presidential Job Creation Record

The job market rebound in November made it much more likely that President Joe Biden would leave office after overseeing an economy that added jobs every single month of his presidency, something no other president in history has done.

If the economy adds jobs in December and January, then Biden will have completed his entire presidency with positive job growth. That record was nearly broken in October when strikes and hurricanes pushed job creation into barely positive territory. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics upwardly revised its October count Friday, taking it to 36,000 jobs from 12,000, making it less likely that future revisions will make it negative.

Every other president had had at least one month when the economy lost jobs, going back to 1939 when the government began keeping track.

Jobs Were A Bright Spot In Biden-Era Economy

Should the economy maintain its job creation streak, it would underscore the Biden administration’s complicated economic legacy.

Biden took office in January 2021 as the economy was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and employers were re-staffing as businesses reopened. The recovery turned into an outright labor market boom, and by mid-2022, there were a record high two jobs for every unemployed worker. The next year, the unemployment rate hit its lowest since the 1960s.

But that rapid growth came with a downside: inflation. The inflation rate hit a four-decade high at the peak of the red-hot job market.

Since then, the job market and inflation have both settled down close to pre-pandemic conditions, but the public seemingly remembered the latter much more than the former when it came time to select a president: voter anger over Biden-era inflation helped sweep Democrats out of power in every branch of government in the November elections.