AP Fact Check finds Biden made exaggerated claims on jobs, gasoline

A new fact check by The Associated Press said President Biden made inaccurate remarks with his recent comments on job growth and gasoline prices.

Biden on Thursday took credit for creating “on average 750,000 new jobs per month” in the past three months.

“When I was sworn in as president, the nation was struggling to pull out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” he said. “Job growth was anemic, with just over 60,000 new jobs per month in the three months before I was sworn in. Then we went to work. We passed the American Rescue Plan back in March. And it worked; it’s still working.”

However, the AP noted that the job gains largely reflected the reopening of the economy after months of pandemic lockdowns. The widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. also helped businesses rehire.

Biden’s $1.9 million American Rescue Plan, signed into law in March, helped growth with a third round of stimulus checks and an extension on expanded unemployment benefits through the first week of September. However, job growth has started to recede as the highly contagious delta variant spreads across the nation.

The AP also said Biden misleadingly stated that “a lot of evidence” showed “gas prices should be going down, but they haven’t.”

While gas prices usually fall after Labor Day, analysts said there does not appear to be any wrongdoing in the market leading to the higher prices.

“I’m not seeing any profiteering or bad actors,” Phil Flynn, an energy analyst at the Price Futures Group, told the AP.

The high prices are partly a result of the recent hurricanes, which shut most oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, several big refineries, and a significant fuel pipeline to the East Coast, the news outlet reported.

The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. is $3.19, according to AAA. That number is unchanged from last month, but up a dollar from last year.