Trump’s Numbers (Second Quarterly Update)

Summary

In the time Donald Trump has been in the White House:

• The economy added 3.2 million jobs, unemployment fell to the lowest level in 18 years, and the number of job openings grew larger than the number of job-seekers for the first time on record.
• Economic growth picked up, but remains below what Trump promised, and even below the best years under Barack Obama.
• The murder rate declined — at least in the 30 largest cities.
• The decade-long downward trend in carbon dioxide emissions from energy slowed — and has most recently turned upward.
• Illegal border crossings from Mexico slowed, but Trump’s promised border wall is still not funded.
• Inflation-adjusted weekly wages rose 1.2 percent.
• Home prices rose 17 percent, to a record level.
• The U.S. trade deficit continued rising — up 13.6 percent.
• The federal debt rose by more than $1 trillion, and projected annual deficits increased.

Analysis

This is our second quarterly update of the “Trump’s Numbers” scorecard that we posted in January and updated for the first time in April. We’ll publish additional updates every three months, as fresh statistics become available.

As always, we’ve included numbers that may seem good or bad or just neutral, depending on the reader’s point of view. And we stress again that opinions differ on how much credit or blame any president deserves for things that happen during his time in office.

And we remind readers that some changes that have happened already during Trump’s time in office haven’t yet shown up in official statistics. FBI crime figures for all of 2017, as well as Census Bureau poverty and household income figures for 2017, won’t be released until later this year. We’ll cover those and more in quarterly updates to come.

Jobs and Unemployment

Employment — Total nonfarm employment grew by more than 3.2 million during the president’s first 17 months in office, according to the most recent figures available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That’s steady, solid growth to be sure, continuing an unbroken chain of monthly gains in total employment that started in October 2010.

But the average monthly gain under Trump is 189,000 jobs, which is nearly 13 percent below the monthly average of 217,000 during Obama’s second term.

Trump will have to pick up the pace if he is to fulfill his campaign boast that he will be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” At the current monthly rate, a total of just over 18 million jobs would be added over eight years. That’s better than the 11.6 million added under Obama and the 16.1 million added under Ronald Reagan, but well below the 22.9 million added when Bill Clinton was president, and the population was smaller.

Unemployment — The unemployment rate — which was well below the historical norm when Trump took office — has continued to fall even lower, to the lowest point in 18 years.

The rate was 4.8 percent when he was sworn in, and then fell to 3.8 percent in May — a low not seen since April 2000 — before ticking up to 4.0 percent most recently, in June.

The rate also is well below the historical norm of 5.6 percent, which is the median monthly rate for all the months since the start of 1948. The lowest unemployment rate ever recorded was in 1953, when the rate was 2.5 percent for a couple of months.

Another reason employment growth has slowed is a . The number of unfilled job openings the most in the more than 17 years the Bureau looking for work, which was under 6.6 million.