Biden’s Numbers

Summary

A year ago, Joseph R. Biden took office as the 46th president of the United States — inheriting an economy weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic, but with effective vaccines to finally deal with it.

To mark Biden’s first year in office, we take stock of how the U.S. has performed under the new president. Here are some highlights:

• The U.S. economy added 6.2 million jobs since January 2021, but not all of the jobs lost during the pandemic have returned.
• Economic growth slowed in the third quarter, but economists estimate the economy grew by about 5% in 2021 — the fastest in decades.
• A key measurement of illegal immigration rose dramatically. The number of apprehensions at the border with Mexico increased by 317% in Biden’s first 10 full months in office, compared with the same period in 2020.
• Inflation came roaring back. During Biden’s first 11 months in office, the Consumer Price Index increased 6.8%. Gasoline prices jumped 39%.
• Wages and inflation are both up. But real weekly wages, adjusted for inflation, declined 2.2% for production and nonsupervisory workers.
• Corporate profits and stock prices hit new records.
• The number of people without health insurance went down by about 500,000, according to a government survey.
• The U.S. trade deficit, which grew larger under President Donald Trump, continued to increase. The gap grew 27.3% in Biden’s first 10 months.
• The number of people receiving food stamp benefits declined by about 905,000, or 2.2%, after steep increases during the height of the pandemic.
• The federal debt continues to rise, and annual deficits remained in the trillions.
• Biden has kept pace with Trump’s first year in winning confirmation of federal appeals court judges, and exceeded his predecessor in District Court confirmations.
• The U.S. image abroad has recovered. In 12 nations, many of which are key U.S. allies and partners, a median of 62% of foreigners said they held a positive view of the U.S. — up from a median of 34% in Trump’s final year.

Analysis

It has been nearly 10 years since we published “Obama’s Numbers” — our attempt to provide a statistical measure of then-President Barack Obama’s first term in office as he went before the voters to seek reelection. After Obama won, we continued with quarterly reports. We did the same for Trump — and now we do so for Biden.

As always, we include statistics that may seem good for the president or bad, depending on a person’s partisan leanings. In Biden’s case, the economy and employment have been growing fast. But inflation and border apprehensions are also way up. 

And, as always, we make no judgments on how much credit or blame the president deserves for any of it. We also warn that no single statistic can tell the whole story.

As it was for Trump, COVID-19 has been a defining issue of Biden’s presidency. As of Jan. 19, there have been more than 850,000 deaths in the U.S. attributed to COVID-19, a figure that’s more than twice as high as when Biden was sworn in, according to Johns Hopkins University & Medicine statistics. Despite highly effective vaccines and significantly higher death rates for the unvaccinated, compared with those who got the shots, 37% of the U.S. population isn’t fully vaccinated. The human devastation and economic disruption are reflected in many of the statistics we present here.

Some statistics that we would like to include aren’t available just yet. FBI crime figures for last year aren’t due until September, for example. Poverty and household income figures for 2021 won’t be released until later this year. We’ll cover those issues and more in quarterly updates. 

In all cases, we use the most recent and most reliable data available.

Jobs and Unemployment

The pandemic remains the major driver of the economy, which has continued to recover under Biden. While the employment picture has improved dramatically in Biden’s first year, it has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Employment — The U.S. economy added 6,215,000 jobs between January 2021, when Biden took office, and December, the latest month for which data is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Biden has that that is “a record number for a new president.” And in raw numbers, that’s correct. But not as a percentage increase. Over the same period in President Jimmy Carter’s first year, employment grew by 4.6%,