Claim: President Joe Biden claimed during Thursday’s State of the Union address that he created a “record” 15 million new jobs.

Verdict: Misleading. Jobs are up only five million since the pre-coronavirus pandemic economy.

Biden claimed:

Turning setback into comeback.

That’s America!

I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is the envy of the world!

15 million new jobs in just three years – that’s a record!

Unemployment at 50-year lows.

At the employment rate peak in February 2020, pre-coronavirus pandemic, there were over 152 million jobs. Now, under Biden, there are 157.7 million jobs. Given the historic unemployment rates during the coronavirus pandemic, it would appear that there are only roughly 5.7 million new jobs since the peak employment rate under Trump.

Breitbart News Economics Editor John Carney wrote in the Breitbart News Digest:

Take the unemployment rate. This has fallen to 3.7 percent, a low rate by historical standards. But it was even lower under President Trump before the pandemic struck, falling below four percent in the summer of 2018 for the first time in decades. And that wasn’t a short-lived dip. On the eve of the pandemic shutdowns, in February 2020, the unemployment rate was still 3.5 percent.

Biden is also likely to tout his administration’s job creation record. The economy has added an impressive 14.8 million jobs since January 2021, when Biden took office, and this January, growth of around 10 percent. That puts him on track to match or exceed some of the best job growth numbers seen in recent decades, including the job booms in Bill Clinton’s first term and Ronald Reagan’s second term.

That record, however, is distorted by the historic job losses inflicted by the pandemic. Compared with February 2020, jobs are only up 3.5 percent. This lends credence to the argument that many of the jobs that Biden takes credit for are not the result of his policies but the result of the whipsaw shutdown and recovery wrought by the pandemic.

“Biden ran on the promise of restoring and enhancing prepandemic prosperity. His popularity has struggled and his prospects for a second term have dimmed because that promise has been undermined by inflation. Convincing Americans otherwise is a tall order—even for a State of the Union address,” Carney added.

Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.