Trump’s Numbers

Summary

Now that President Donald Trump has been in office for one day shy of a full year, it’s time to take a look at how well his boasts  — and his critics’ complaints — stack up against hard data.

Here we offer key measures of what has happened since Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017, according to the most up-to-date and reliable statistical sources available. Some highlights:

• Employment growth slowed by 12 percent. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate kept dropping, reaching a 17-year low. The number of job vacancies rose, also to a nearly 17-year record.
• Economic growth picked up to a 3.2 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter from 1.5 percent for all of 2016.
• The number of people caught trying to cross the border with Mexico fell by nearly half.
• The number of refugee admissions fell by 70 percent.
• Restrictions in the federal regulatory rulebook continued to grow, but at less than half the pace during the two previous administrations.
• The number of coal mining jobs, which Trump promised to bring back, went up by only 500. Manufacturing jobs grew just a bit faster than total employment.
• Real weekly wages rose 1.1 percent. Corporate profits and stock prices hit new records.
• The number of people without health insurance went up — by 200,000 according to a government survey, and by 3.2 million according to a more recent Gallup poll.
• The U.S. trade deficit that Trump promised to bring down grew instead, getting 11.5 percent larger.
• The number of people on food stamps, which Trump wants to cut, grew by nearly 3 million.
• The federal debt rose nearly 3 percent; projected annual deficits worsened.
• Trump won confirmation for a dozen federal appeals court judges — quadruple the number Obama put on the bench during his first year.
• The U.S. image abroad took a hit. The number of foreigners telling pollsters they have a favorable view of the USA fell nearly everywhere. The only big gain was in Russia.

The stories behind each of these quick summary figures, plus hyperlinks to the official sources, are contained in the Analysis section.

Analysis

As we did when we posted our first “Obama’s Numbers” article more than five years ago — and in the quarterly updates and final summary that followed — we’ve included statistics that may seem good or bad or just indifferent, depending on the reader’s point of view. 

We’ll say again, opinions will differ on how much credit or blame a president deserves for things that happen during his time in office. And we urge readers to be aware that some changes that have happened already won’t show up in statistics until later updates. FBI crime figures for all of last year aren’t due until September, for example. Poverty and household income figures for 2017 won’t be available until later this year. We’ll cover those and more in quarterly updates to come.

Jobs and Unemployment

Since Trump took office, job growth has slowed. Job-seekers became more scarce, and employers struggled to find workers.

Employment — Total nonfarm employment grew by 1.84 million during the president’s first 11 months in office, according to the most recent figures available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It’s a respectable gain, to be sure. But it’s 12 percent lower than the 2.01 million jobs that were created in the 11 months before he entered office.

The average monthly job gain under Trump is now 167,182, well behind the average monthly gain of 213,708 jobs during Obama’s entire second term. It’s also well shy of the pace required to meet his goal of 25 million new jobs over 10 years.

Trump will have to pick up the pace if he is.”