Did Biden kill 11,000 jobs by cancelling Keystone Pipeline?

Social media posts continue to swirl online claiming Biden’s order resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs, but the VERIFY team found the claim to be misleading.

HOUSTON – President Joe Biden wasted no time signing an executive order revoking approval for the Keystone Pipeline. Construction of the 875-mile pipeline from Canada, which will eventually lead to the refineries on the Gulf, was immediately canceled.

As soon as Biden finished the project, posts like this spread on social media platforms claiming that Biden’s contract had destroyed 11,000 jobs. The Republican legislature also reiterated the claims.

“He killed thousands of American workplaces on Joe Biden’s first day in office,” said Wisconsin Congressman Bryan Steil.

“With the stroke of a pen, President Biden told 11,000 union workers that their jobs were gone,” said Senator Ted Cruz.

But are these claims true?

The number of 11,000 is a job estimate released in an October press release from TC Energy, the company that owns the pipeline.

Days ago, TC Energy said Biden’s order would “directly result in the sacking of thousands of union workers.”

But the key context is missing.

Only around 1,000 of these positions are currently filled. Most of these jobs were temporary jobs that would last 4 to 8 months while a pipeline would have been built. Those jobs would have been mostly in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas.

Finally, a US State Department report on the Keystone Pipeline found that the project would only create 50 permanent and permanent jobs, some of which would be in Canada rather than the US.

So we can VERIFY that the claim is true, but without critical context, the actual number of jobs lost to Biden’s Executive Order is very misleading.

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