FACT CHECK: Have More Than 1.8 Million Jobs Been Created Since Tax Reform Became Law?
The official Twitter account for Senate Republicans claimed Thursday that over 1.8 million jobs have been added to the economy since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was signed into law.
More than 1.8 million jobs have been created since Republican-led #TaxReform was enacted. pic.twitter.com/mLIATo2zYJ
— Senate Republicans (@SenateGOP) October 11, 2018
“More than 1.8 million jobs have been created since Republican-led #TaxReform was enacted,” they said.
Verdict: True
About 1.9 million jobs have been added since tax reform became law on Dec. 22, 2017.
Fact Check:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported recently that the economy added 134,000 jobs in September, for a total of 1.9 million jobs added from January to September. This is nearly 350,000 more jobs than were gained over the same period last year.
Job creation in 2018 is largely consistent with the past several years. Since 2011, somewhere between 1.5 and 2.2 million jobs were added in the first nine months of the year.
Nevertheless, robust job growth during a period of full employment is difficult to attain, and the current unemployment rate has dropped below what some economists consider to be a long-term rate of 4 to 4.6 percent.
The unemployment rate fell to 3.7 percent in September, the lowest rate since 1969. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that it will reach 3.4 percent in 2019.
Senate Republicans credit tax reform for the recent jobs numbers. The Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank, predicted that the law would generate an additional 339,000 full-time jobs, and in April, the CBO projected that it will add an average of 900,000 jobs over 11 years.
The CBO estimates that, on average, 210,000 jobs a month will be added in 2018, falling to 178,000 in 2019 and 63,000 in 2020.
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