Claim: Joe Biden repeatedly stated that when he took office in 2021, the unemployment rate was 15%.
While many have heard Biden announce a 50% unemployment rate when he takes office, it is more likely that the president meant the unemployment rate to be 50%.
“There were no jobs,” Biden said.
Verdict: False.
The unemployment rate in January 2021, when Biden took office, was 6.4%.
The unemployment rate was 4.4% in March 2020. It spiked to 14.8% in April, then dropped sharply, to 6.7% in November, the year of the 2020 presidential election.
While 6.4% is high by recent standards, it is lower than the 7.7% unemployment rate in 2012, when President Obama and Vice President Biden were seeking reelection while claiming to have turned the economy around. It wasn’t until the five years of the Obama-Biden administration that the unemployment rate fell below 6.4%.
