Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg admitted the mistake and walked back the administration’s job creation promises on Monday night.
by Eric Boehm
Reason.com
In pitching his $2.25 trillion infrastructure spending proposal, President Joe Biden said last week that if the plan was passed, “the economy will create 19 million jobs—good jobs, blue collar jobs, jobs that pay well” over the next 10 years.
That’s a technically accurate description of an analysis of the American Jobs Plan published by Moody’s Analytics, an economic forecasting firm. But it leaves out a major caveat: Without the passage of the American Jobs Act, Moody’s projects that the economy will create 16.3 million jobs in the next decade.
In other words, the passage of Biden’s infrastructure plan would boost job creation by about 2.7 million jobs—not 19 million.
Other administration officials have been more aggressive and less nuanced about selling the 19 million figure.