Biden’s Numbers, October 2022 Update

Summary

With the economy on the top of voters’ minds this election year, we take a look at some key statistical measures of how the U.S. has performed under President Joe Biden: 

• The economy gained 10 million jobs; total employment is now half a million higher than before the pandemic.
• Unemployment fell to 3.5%; unfilled job openings surged, with 1.7 slots for every person seeking work.
• Inflation roared back to the highest level in over 40 years. Consumer prices are up 13.2%. Gasoline alone rose 64%.
• Wages rose briskly, by 9%. But after adjusting for inflation, “real” weekly earnings went down 4.4%.
• The economy contracted for two consecutive quarters this year, but after-tax corporate profits set new records. 
• Apprehensions of those trying to enter the country illegally through the southwest border are up 330% for the past 12 months, compared with President Donald Trump’s last year in office.
• The trade deficit continues to expand and could be headed for a record $1 trillion by year’s end.  
• Household income has gone down slightly. 
• The number of people receiving food benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has continued to decline and is now 2.8% lower.
• The number of those without health insurance went down by 1.1 million.
• The murder rate went up by 0.2 percentage points, though the FBI relied on less data than normal to make the estimate.
• Home prices are up 29%, but the homeownership rate remains unchanged. 
• The administration accepted only 25,465 refugees in fiscal year 2022 that just ended — far fewer than the president’s goal of 125,000. 

Analysis

President Joe Biden has been in office for nearly two years, during which time he enacted major pieces of legislation such as the American Rescue Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. He also has been navigating crises both here and abroad, from a surge of migrants at the U.S. southern border to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Here we provide the best available data to measure how the U.S. has been performing under the Democratic president as voters head to the polls for the midterm elections.

For this report, we have newly released Census Bureau figures on poverty, household income and health insurance, an FBI report on nationwide crime, and handgun production data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, among other things.

As always, we make no judgment as to how much credit or blame any president deserves for changes that happen during his time in office. We leave that for others to decide.  

Jobs and Unemployment

The number of people with jobs has increased dramatically since Biden took office, finally surpassing pre-pandemic levels.

Employment — The U.S. economy added 10,001,000 jobs between Biden’s inauguration and September, the latest month for which data are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of September, 514,000 more people had jobs than in February 2020, the peak of employment before COVID-19 forced massive shutdowns and layoffs.

One major category of jobs is still lagging, however. Government employment is still 597,000 jobs short of the pre-pandemic peak — including 309,000 public school teachers and other local education workers. 

Unemployment — The unemployment rate fell from 6.4% at the time Biden took office to 3.5% in September — a decline of 2.9 percentage points. The current rate is exactly where it was in the months just before the pandemic.

Since 1948, when BLS began keeping records, the jobless rate has been at or below 3.5% for only 58 months, or 6.5% of the time. Three of those months were during the Trump years, including when the rate hit a low of 3.5% in January and February 2020, just before the pandemic. That was the lowest since the 1960s.

Job Openings — The number of unfilled job openings soared to a record of nearly 11.9 million during Biden’s first 14 months in office, but then declined somewhat.

The number had slipped down to just 10 million on the last business day of August, the most recent month on record. That’s still an increase of just over 2.8 million openings — or 39% — during Biden’s time.

In August, there was an average of nearly 1.7 jobs for every job seeker. When Biden took office, there were more job seekers than openings.

The number of job openings in September is set to be released Nov. 1.

— One reason many job openings go unfilled is that millions of Americans left the workforce during the pandemic and haven’t returned. The (the percentage of the total population over age 16 that is either employed or actively seeking work)