Claim: Biden claimed that the U.S. economy was on the brink of disaster when he took office.
“I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is the envy of the world!” Biden said.
Verdict: False.
President Biden inherited an economy that was recovering strongly from the pandemic. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the economy grew at an annual rate of 4.3%.
Last quarter, it grew at an annualized rate of 33.1% as the economy swung from lockdown to reopening.
In the first quarter of 2021, when Biden took office as president, the economy grew at an annual rate of 5.2%. (This was reported as an annual rate of 6.3 percent until the Commerce Department revised the calculation last fall.)
The unemployment rate in January 2021 was 6.4 percent, down from 14.8 percent in April 2020. Although it has increased compared to recent levels and the Trump administration, it is not particularly high from a historical perspective. When Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012, the unemployment rate was 7.7 percent.
