Fact check: Biden administration officials falsely describe infrastructure jobs estimate

The White House official said Deese intended to say Moody’s found the infrastructure proposal would “help” create 19 million jobs, not that the proposal would itself create 19 million jobs. Buttigieg’s staff did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Moody’s estimated that the economy would have added about 15.7 million jobs between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2030 if the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief law had not been approved and if the infrastructure proposal never gets approved. In other words, Moody’s said that these two signature Biden plans would be responsible for about 3.3 million jobs above a baseline scenario in which there had been “no additional support” for the economy.

Biden’s language

Biden’s description of the “19 million” statistic was more correct than the ones offered by Deese and Buttigieg. But Biden’s language nonetheless invited listeners to come to an inaccurate understanding of what Moody’s concluded.

“They report that over the next decade they expect nonfarm payroll jobs…to be up by 19 million. Some of that is the Rescue Plan, some of that’s the Jobs Plan, some of that is underlying growth,” Bernstein said.