It’s good to remember GDP is a year-over-year number. In other words, it’s easier to have a high percentage increase in the current year if you’re rolling over a large decrease in the prior year. In 2020, red and blue state governors shut down their states’ economies to slow the pandemic’s spread.   

With our economy shut down, GDP understandably declined by a significant 3.4%, the largest drop since at least 1948. So, with the bar set at an historic low of -3.4% in 2020, GDP naturally rebounded in 2021. No surprise here.  

The fact is that when states reopened, given the depths to which the economy sank, GDP was going to increase no matter what.

To make the nature of this 5.7% increase even clearer, let’s look at GDP dollars (as opposed to percentages). In 2019 (pre-pandemic), GDP was about $19 trillion. Because the economy was shut down for much of 2020, GDP dropped to about $18.4 trillion. In 2021, it rose again to about $19.4 trillion. That’s an increase for 2021 of 2% over 2019, a fairer comparison and a less than impressive gain.  

The fact is that when states reopened, given the depths to which the economy sank, GDP was going to increase no matter what Biden did. As it turns out, GDP increased only 2% over its pre-pandemic level – and that was with gargantuan government spending.   

That brings us to Biden’s second claim – "a record number of jobs created." Because of the pandemic-induced economic shutdowns, the economy lost about 9.4 million jobs in 2020, the steepest job loss on record. As we emerged from the pandemic, we recovered about 6.5 million jobs in 2021, or a return of 70% of the jobs we lost.  

In other words, while a large number of people have returned to work (Biden claims these are jobs his policies "created"), we’re still 2.9 million jobs, or 30%, below pre-pandemic levels.  

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So are Biden’s economic policies responsible for that 70% of jobs recovered or is it states reopening their economies? Well, it turns out that the red states leading the way in reopening their economies are also leading the way in creating jobs.  

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