Biden’s Numbers, April 2024 Update

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Summary

As President Joe Biden runs for reelection, here’s how the U.S. has fared during his time in office:

• The economy added 15.2 million jobs. The number is now nearly 6 million higher than before the pandemic.

• The unemployment rate dropped back and has stayed lower, longer than at any time during the previous administration.

• The U.S. economy has expanded each year under Biden and is expected to continue to grow this year, although the first quarter estimate for this year was below expectations.

• Inflation surged to its highest level in over 40 years. Despite recent moderation, consumer prices are up nearly 19% overall. Gasoline is up 54%.

• Average weekly earnings haven’t kept pace with prices. After adjusting for inflation, “real” weekly earnings dropped 2.5%.

• The number of people receiving food stamps has decreased by more than 1 million.

• The S&P 500 has increased 32.9%.

• Apprehensions of those trying to cross the southern border illegally are up 297% for the 12 months ending in March.

• Crude oil production is up 14.2%; imports are up 10.8%.

• Violent crime has gone down. The latest figures from large cities show an 8.6% drop in murders.

• The publicly held debt has increased by roughly 27%.

• The trade deficit for goods and services is about 18.8% higher.

• For fiscal year 2024, the administration is on pace to admit the most refugees in nearly three decades.

Analysis

In the fall presidential election, Biden will likely face his predecessor, Donald Trump. As we did for Trump, we’ve compiled on a quarterly basis the latest statistics that provide a measure of how things have changed under Biden’s time in office.

This is our ninth quarterly update of “Biden’s Numbers,” which we first published in January 2022. We plan to publish two more updates before Election Day, in July and October.

Jobs and Unemployment

The number of people with jobs rebounded strongly during Biden’s time, surpassing pre-pandemic levels by almost 6 million.

Employment — The U.S. economy added 15,217,000 jobs between Biden’s inauguration and March, the latest month for which data are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The March figure is 5,824,000 higher than the February 2020 peak of employment before COVID-19 forced massive shutdowns and layoffs.

Some areas are still lagging, however. In March, there were only 23,000 more local government education workers, including teachers, than there were at the pre-pandemic peak, and reports of teacher shortages persist. Employment in the leisure industry still hasn’t recovered; there were 151,000 fewer hotel and restaurant workers and others in the accommodation and food services industries in March than before the pandemic.

Unemployment — The unemployment rate has been lower for longer under Biden than under his predecessor.

It hit the lowest point in over half a century in January 2023 and again in April 2023, when it was 3.4%, the lowest since June 1969.

This March also marked the 28th consecutive month that the rate was at or below 4%. The longest such stretch under Donald Trump was 24 months, just before the pandemic sent the unemployment rate soaring.

The rate was 3.8% last month, down 2.6 percentage points since Biden took office.

Job Openings — The number of unfilled job openings soared, reaching a record of over 12 million in March 2022, but then declined after the Federal Reserve began a steep series of interest rate increases aimed at cooling the economy to bring down price inflation.

The number of unfilled jobs was nearly 8.8 million as of the last business day of February, the most recent month on record. That’s still an increase of nearly 1.6 million openings — almost 22% — compared with January 2021, when Biden took office.

In February, there was an average of nearly 1.4 jobs for. When Biden took office, it was the other way around — fewer openings than unemployed job seekers.