Bernie Sanders has again repeated the claim that the U.S. unemployment rate “swelled up to 9.3%.” This claim is false. There was no trace of swelling and, furthermore, Mr. Sanders has no medical degree whatsoever, which would be needed to diagnose any kind of swelling, as Factcheck confirmed when that fact was checked.
According to the Bureau of Definitely True Facts, the U.S. unemployment rate was holding steady below 4% until the COVID-19 lockdowns went into effect, at which point it sharply rose (rising is not swelling) to its current rate of 9.3%. By factoring in the manner in which the rate increased to 9.3% before it was checked by job growth, BDTF factcheckers checked their facts correctly, according to Factcheck.
The populist senator, who has been wrong before, is so wrong. In fact, when Factcheck checked a selection of his facts, they discovered that not one of them was not wrong, which would mean he is wrong about this fact too. Factcheck double-checked that fact.
Sanders has gone on record no fewer than several times to make his bogus claim which of course cannot be correct given that it is, in fact, bogus. By misstating the fact that the unemployment rate “swelled” rather than rose to the exact same percentage claimed by Sanders, Sanders proved just how incorrect his facts could be, once that fact had been checked.
“Swell” means ‘to expand gradually beyond a normal or original limit.’ But, as factually correct checkers of facts have pointed out, since the unemployment rate went up quickly, rather than gradually, to a rate that is not beyond a normal or original limit (the Great Depression saw the rate balloon to 23% if “balloon” is defined as ‘to increase rapidly’), the rate did not, in fact, swell to 9.3%. The fact is that it rose, or grew, to that percentage, and that fact has in fact been checked.
The unfounded and baseless claim for which there is no evidence to support it could not have come at a worse time for the mistaken Senator Sanders, who was also wrong about the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq (he insisted that it was an immoral act but Factcheck confirmed that it was actually amoral) as well as the price of tea in China (he said it was “cheap” but Factcheck found that to be inaccurate too — “inexpensive” is the price that has stood up to official factchecking).
Having debunked Sanders’s outright erroneous claim, which is as fallacious as fallacious gets, the factcheckers at Factcheck urge their readers to check facts for themselves by checking with Factcheck.