Trump claims credit for strong job market. Experts say he also should thank Obama

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump stood before a crowd of small-business owners at a hotel here last week and said that his administration's economic policy could "be summed up in three very beautiful words ... jobs, jobs, jobs."

Then, as he and other administration officials have frequently done, he trumpeted a slew of recent outstanding labor market statistics: the lowest unemployment rate since 1969, the best black and Latino unemployment rates since the government began tracking them in the early 1970s, the four-week average for jobless claims at a 44-year low and 3.4 million jobs created since his election.

"Nobody would have believed these numbers if I said them during the campaign," Trump told a cheering crowd of members of the National Federation of Independent Business on Wednesday.

But when it comes to