End Wokeness post overstates government jobs’ role in Biden-era job creation

The conservative X account End Wokeness said former President Joe Biden presided over an economy that was heavily driven by government growth, rather than job gains in the private sector.

A March 7 post to its 3.6 million followers said:

2017-2020:

Public sector: 9% of U.S. job growth

Private sector: 91% of U.S. job growth
 

2021-2024:

Public sector: 31% of U.S. job growth

Private sector: 69% of U.S. job growth
 

February 2025 job report:

Public sector: 7% of U.S. job growth

Private sector: 93% of U.S. job growth

The 2017 to 2020 numbers coincide with President Donald Trump’s first term and are roughly accurate. But the post significantly exaggerated the government jobs gained under Biden.

We sent a direct message to the End Wokeness account for this article but did not hear back.

Private sector employment can be calculated by subtracting government employment from overall employment, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

For Trump’s first term, we calculated the change in employment from January 2017 through February 2020, right before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a substantial impact on employment. Overall, employment rose by almost 6.7 million jobs during that period; 92% were private sector jobs, while 8% were in government. That’s close to what the X post said.

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Rick Scott

stated on March 9, 2025 in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union"

“The number of full-time jobs (was) dropping almost the entire Biden administration.”

The post’s figures for February 2025 accurately represent the data for one month of Trump’s second term 

For Biden, though, the post’s numbers are off base.

We first calculated job growth during Biden’s entire tenure, from January 2021 through December 2024. During that period, jobs grew by 16 million, with 11% of those gains — not 31% — from government jobs, while 89% were from private-sector jobs.

Biden-era government job gains did make up a larger portion of overall job growth beginning in    June 2022, when employment returned to its prepandemic peak. Of about 6.6 million jobs created between then and the end of Biden’s term, 22% were in government compared with 78% from the private sector.

There’s a reason for the faster government job growth after that point, said Dean Baker, an economist with the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. By June 2022, there was a labor shortage, and private employers were able to raise wages faster than governments, because the latter requires legislative action. That enabled private companies to capture more workers quickly. Governments caught up by later in Biden’s term. 

An End Wokeness post said that during Biden’s four years in office, "31% of U.S. job growth" came from public-sector jobs.

During Biden’s time in office, 11% of job gains were in the public sector.

This represented a slight increase over the growth in public sector jobs during Trump's first term, but was only one-third as high as the post said.

We rate the statement False.