Gavin Newsom says the Biden-Harris years have meant huge job increases. Is he right?
You’re much better off today than you were before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office. At least, that’s Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pitch this week as Election Day approaches.
Newsom cites lots of number to back up his claims. We checked with several independent sources — the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which compiles economic data; the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the International Monetary Fund, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Bureau of Investigation —to fact check his assertions about where voters stand going into Election Day Tuesday.
Here’s a look at Newsom’s statements:
▪ ”There have been eight times more jobs created in the last 3.5 years than the last three Republican administrations combined. Combined. Yes, that’s a fact.”
True. We compared job numbers in the January each president was inaugurated with the January when they left office.
Biden, sworn into office in January 2021, has seen 16.1 million jobs created.
Here are the job creation numbers for the last three Republican presidents: Trump lost 2.7 million jobs as the Covid pandemic led to high unemployment; under George W. Bush, 1.36 million jobs were created, with the Great Recession of 2007-09 hitting in his second term, and under George H. W. Bush, 2.6 million jobs were created.
Add up all the numbers and Newsom is correct. However, looking back just one more Republican administration further — that of President Ronald Reagan — and the numbers change, with 16 million jobs created from 1981 to 1989.
▪ ”We currently have the lowest Black unemployment rate.”
Not true. The September rate, the latest available, was 5.7%, BLS reported. It was 4.8% in April 2023, while Biden was president..
Under Trump, the rate hit 5.3% in August and September 2019..
▪ ”The lowest unemployment rate for women in 70 years.”
Not true. The rate last month was 3.9%, higher than the 3.4% logged under Trump in September and October 2019. It also reached 3.4% during the Biden administration last year.
The rate hovered around 3% in the early 1950s, when women were not as prevalent in the workforce.
▪ “The lowest unemployment for Hispanics.”
The way his sentence is constructed, it sounds like Newsom is saying the current rate is the lowest. That’s not true.
The rate was 4% in July and November 2022, but has since crept up. The September rate was 5.1%. During the Trump years, the rate hit 3.9% in September 2019.
▪ ”The lowest unemployment for people with disabilities in our lifetime.”
True. The September rate was 7.2%. But the rate in December 2022 was 5%, the lowest on record. The lowest during the Trump years was 6.1% in September 2019.
▪ ”The American economy continues to outperform other countries while inflation rates are being tamed.”
Partly true. Prices in the U.S. climbed at a modest 2.4% pace in the 12 months ending in September.
But the International Monetary Fund projects in its World Economic Outlook that the U.S. economy will grow at a 2.8% pace this year, in line with most major forecasts.
While that’s a more robust pace than most other advanced nations, it lags China, at 4.8%, India, at 7%, Russia, at 3.6% and several other emerging nations and developing economies.
▪ ”Donald Trump has the worst job creation record of ANY president since the Great Depression.”
True. The nation lost 2.7 million jobs during Trump’s term., thanks to the Covid-triggered downturn that began 10 months before he left office.
Since Harry S. Truman took office in April, 1945, every president had ended his term with a net gain in jobs created.
▪ “We have the lowest uninsured rate in our lifetime.”
Mostly true. While it’s true that there were record lows in uninsured Americans in 2023, largely thanks to pandemic policies, the CDC reported in August that more than 8% of Americans did not have coverage in the first few months of 2024. It’s a very slight increase in the rate of uninsured compared to the same time period in 2023, when it was 7.7%. Still, it’s not a statistically significant change.
The Congressional Budget Office recently forecast that the U.S. uninsured rate would worsen in upcoming years due to the end of pandemic insurance policies and a surge of immigration, as newly-arrived immigrants would be less likely to have health coverage than the overall population.
▪ “Crime is down significantly. The murder rate year to date is down 22.7%.”
Needs context. This likely refers to preliminary The FBI reported a 22.7% reduction in murders in the first six months of 2024 compared to 2023. That data is not finalized and excludes any crime since the end of June.
▪ “Obesity rates and opioid rates are dropping.”
Partly true. The CDC reported at the end of September that U.S. obesity overall decreased slightly from about four years ago. But the prevalence of obesity is higher than it was 10 years ago, and the rate of severe obesity has grown.
About 40.3% of adults aged 20 and older were estimated to be obese between August 2021 and August 2023. That is lower than the 2017 to 2020 federal estimates, which said about 41.9% were estimated to be obese. From 2013 to 2014, just 37.7% were estimated to be obese.
But since the 2013 to 2014 period, the number of people with severe obesity grew. In the 2021 to 2023 period, 9.7% of adults were severely obese; and the figure from 2017 to 2020 was 9.2%. That’s compared to 7.7% from 2013 to 2014.
Newsom’s point on opioid rates requires context. Assuming he’s referring to deaths, overall drug overdose deaths rose from 2019 to 2022. There were over 111,000 drug overdose deaths in 2022, according to the National Center for Health Statistics at the CDC.
But provisional data for 2023 estimates almost 108,000 overdose deaths that year, a decrease from 2022 and the first annual decrease since 2018. Almost 75,000 deaths were estimated to be from synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, in 2023 compared to over 76,000 deaths in 2022.
▪ “Insulin is now capped at $35/month through all major insulin manufacturers for seniors on Medicare.”
True. A $35 monthly cap for Medicare recipients passed through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
▪ “’Blue states’ have longer life expectancy, higher minimum wages, and lower gun death rates.”
True, with context. There are studies that support the claim that blue states — where voters tend to support Democrats — have longer life expectancy due to political policies and the environment, among other factors.
Those states also tend to have higher minimum wages, according to a review of state minimum wages.
Newsom and others have previously cited a study by the center-left think tank Third Way that found red states — where voters generally support Republicans — have higher murder rates than blue ones.
▪ “A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for a national abortion ban.”
False, and lacks context. The former president said in October that he would veto a federal abortion ban, though Trump previously declined to say whether he would veto such a ban.
Either way, a ban would need to be approved by Congress before reaching the president’s desk for signature, requiring Republican majorities in the House and Senate desiring to pass such legislation.
Still, Trump has touted his placement of three conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned almost 50 years of federal abortion protections in 2022 and allowed states to enforce restrictions on access.
This story was originally published November 1, 2024 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Gavin Newsom says the Biden-Harris years have meant huge job increases. Is he right?."
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