Summary

Here’s how things have changed in the U.S. so far under President Joe Biden, who announced on April 25 that he is officially running for reelection:

• The economy added 12.6 million jobs under Biden, putting the total 3.2 million higher than before the pandemic.

• The unemployment rate dropped back to 3.5%; unfilled job openings surged, with nearly 1.7 for every unemployed job seeker.

• Inflation roared back to the highest level in over 40 years, then slowed markedly. In all, consumer prices are up nearly 15%. Gasoline is up 54%.

• Weekly earnings rose briskly, by 11.3%. But after adjusting for inflation, “real” weekly earnings went down 3.6%.

• People apprehended for entering the U.S. illegally from Mexico has increased by 342%.

• Domestic crude oil production has increased 5.7%, and crude oil imports are up almost 6.7%.

• The economy grew at 2.1% last year, despite high inflation and concerns about a possible recession.

• The population without health insurance dropped by 1.6 percentage points.

• The number of people receiving federal food assistance has increased by about 1.2%.

• Despite a decline in 2022, the number of murders in 70 large U.S. cities has now gone up by 1.6%.

• The stock markets have underperformed. The S&P 500-stock index is up nearly 7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up almost 8%, while the NASDAQ composite index is down 10.2%.

Analysis

This is our sixth installment of “Biden’s Numbers,” which we started in January 2022 and have updated since then every three months.

As we have done for former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, we’ve included the latest statistics from the most authoritative sources to provide a sense of how the country is performing. These statistics may or may not reflect the president’s policies. We make no attempt to render any judgments on how much blame or credit a president deserves. Opinions will vary on that.

Our next Biden’s Numbers article will appear in July.

Jobs and Unemployment

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

Employment — The U.S. economy added 12,600,000 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 3,198,000 higher than the February 2020 peak of employment before COVID-19 forced massive shutdowns and layoffs.

One major category of jobs is still lagging, however. Government employment is still 314,000 jobs short of the pre-pandemic peak. That includes 130,000 fewer public school teachers and other local education workers. 

Unemployment — The unemployment rate fell from 6.3% at the time Biden took office to 3.5% in March — a decline of 2.8 percentage points. The current rate is exactly where it was in the months just before the pandemic.

That’s uncommonly low. Since 1948, when BLS began keeping records, the jobless rate has been at or below 3.5% for only 61 months — including five months during Biden’s time and three months during the Trump years, just before the pandemic. Previously, the rate hadn’t been so low since the 1960s.

Job Openings — The number of unfilled job openings soared, reaching a record of over 12 million in March of last year, 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 has slipped down to just 9.9 million as of the last business day of February, the most recent month on record. That’s still an increase of over 2.8 million openings — or 38.4% — during Biden’s time.

In February, there was an average of nearly 1.7 jobs for every unemployed job seeker. When Biden took office, there were fewer jobs than unemployed job seekers.

The number of job openings in March is set to be released May 2.

Labor Force Participation — One reason many job openings go unfilled is that millions of Americans left the workforce during the pandemic and haven’t returned. The labor force participation rate (the percentage of the total population over age 16 that is either employed or actively seeking work) has slowly recovered during Biden’s time, from 61.3% in January 2021 to 62.6% in March.

That still leaves the rate well short of the pre-pandemic level of 63.3% for February 2020.

The rate peaked at 67.3% more than two decades ago, during the first four months of 2000. Labor Department economists project that the rate will trend down to 60.1% in 2031, “primarily because of an aging population.”

Manufacturing Jobs — During the presidential campaign, Biden promised he had a plan to create a million new manufacturing jobs — and whether it’s his doing or not, the number is rising briskly.

As of March, the U.S. added 787,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden’s time, a 6.5% increase in the space of 26 months, according to BLS. Furthermore, the March total is 198,000 or 1.5% above the number of manufacturing jobs in February 2020, before the pandemic forced plant closures and layoffs.

During Trump’s four years, the economy lost 182,000 manufacturing jobs, or 1.4%, largely due to the pandemic.

Wages and Inflation

CPI — Inflation came roaring back under Biden but has slowed dramatically in recent months.

Overall, during his first 26 months in office the Consumer Price Index rose 14.9%.

It was for a time the worst inflation in decades. The 12 months ending last June saw a 9.1% increase in the CPI (before seasonal adjustment), which the Bureau of Labor Statistics said was the biggest such increase since the 12 months ending in November 1981.

But now inflation is trending down. The CPI rose 5.0% in the most recent 12 months, 1.8% in the most recent six months and only 0.1% in March.

Gasoline Prices — The price of gasoline has gyrated wildly under Biden.

During the first year and a half of his administration, the national average price of regular gasoline at the pump soared to a record high of just over $5 per gallon (in the week ending last June 13). The rise was propelled first by motorists resuming travel and the commerce surging back after pandemic lockdowns, and then by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, which disrupted oil markets as the West attempted to punish Russia, the world’s third-largest oil producer. 

Since then, the price drifted down to a low of $3.09 the week ending Dec. 26, and now has gone up again to $3.66 the week ending April 24, the most recent on record.

That’s $1.28 higher than in the week before Biden took office, an increase of 54%.

Wages — Wages also have gone up under Biden, but not as fast as prices.

Average weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers went up 11.3% during Biden’s first 26 months in office, according to monthly figures compiled by the BLS. Those production and nonsupervisory workers make up 81% of all employees in the private sector.

But inflation ate up all that gain and more. “Real” weekly earnings, which are adjusted for inflation and measured in dollars valued at their average level in 1982-84, actually declined 3.6% since Biden took office.

That’s despite a recent upturn as inflation has moderated. Since June of last year, real earnings have gone up 1.1%.

Economic Growth

Despite two straight quarters of contraction at the beginning of 2022 and fears of a recession, the U.S. economy expanded for the full year in 2022 and continued to grow in the first quarter of 2023.

The U.S. real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product increased 2.1% in 2022 — buoyed by stronger-than-expected third and fourth quarters.

In a March 30 release, the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated that real GDP increased in the third quarter at an annualized rate of 3.2% and in the fourth quarter at a rate of 2.6%.

The growth continued in the first quarter of 2023, but at a slower pace. In its first estimate issued April 27, the BEA said the economy increased at an annual rate of 1.1% in the first quarter.

Still, concerns about a recession remain.

The Conference Board, a nonpartisan business membership and research organization, estimates that the probability of a recession within the next 12 months stands at nearly 99%.

“While US GDP growth defied expectations in late 2022 and early 2023 data has shown unexpected strength, we continue to forecast that GDP growth to contract for three consecutive quarters starting in Q2 2023,” the Conference Board said in an April 12 report on its U.S. recession probability model, citing “the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes and tightening monetary policy.”

In a sustained effort to slow inflation, the Federal Reserve has repeatedly raised interest rates — most recently on March 22, when it raised rates for the ninth time in 12 months.

Corporate Profits

Under Biden, corporate profits continued to set new records — although recent quarters haven’t been as strong.

After-tax corporate profits increased for the seventh consecutive year in 2022, reaching a new high of $2.87 trillion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The record, though, came despite a decline in growth in the last two quarters of the year.

During the third quarter of 2022, corporate profits were estimated at an annual rate of nearly $2.9 trillion — down slightly from the $3 trillion record set in the previous quarter, according to the BEA. That slide continued in the fourth quarter, when profits were running at a yearly rate of $2.7 trillion.

Even with the recent decline in growth, corporate profits were 36% higher than the full-year figure for 2020, the year before Biden took office, as estimated by the BEA. (See line 45.)

Consumer Sentiment

Consumer confidence in the economy remains stubbornly low, even falling a bit since our last report. 

The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers reported that its preliminary monthly Index of Consumer Sentiment for April was 63.5. That’s down slightly from our last report – despite a slight easing recently in consumer prices — and 15.5 points lower than it was when Biden took office in January 2021.

“While consumers have noted the easing of inflation among durable goods and cars, they still expect high inflation to persist, at least in the short run,” Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers, said. “On net, consumers did not perceive material changes in the economic environment in April.”

Stock Markets

Under the past two presidents, the stock markets rose sharply. But that hasn’t been the case under Biden.

Since Biden took office, the S&P 500 stock index is up about 6.8% as of the close of the market on April 26.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is made up of 30 large corporations, hasn’t done much better, increasing 7.7%.

And the tech-heavy NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies, is down 10.2% since Biden took office, despite a surprisingly strong first quarter. Year to date, NASDAQ is up 13.3%.

Health Insurance

The latest figures from the National Health Interview Survey show that 8.7% of the population was uninsured in the third quarter of 2022 at the time they were interviewed. That compares with 10.3% of the population that was uninsured in the fourth quarter of 2020, before Biden took office.

That decrease of 1.6 percentage points is similar to the decrease we noted in our last report comparing all of 2020 to the first six months of 2022. Over that time frame, the number of people without health insurance declined by 4.2 million.

The NHIS is a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the data collection is performed by the Census Bureau in face-to-face interviews.

It’s possible the number, and percentage, of uninsured Americans will start to go up, now that some Medicaid provisions enacted during the coronavirus pandemic are being phased out.

As the Kaiser Family Foundation explains, in March 2020, a pandemic relief law increased the federal Medicaid funding sent to states and required states to keep Medicaid recipients continuously enrolled while the COVID-19 public health emergency was in effect. The Medicaid program is known for “churn,” meaning people lose coverage and reenroll often. This could be due to fluctuations in income that change eligibility or inability to comply with renewal requirements and checks on eligibility.

This continuous enrollment provision was one reason Medicaid enrollment has grown over the last few years, reaching nearly 95 million at the end of March. But this requirement ended on March 31, due to another law Congress passed late last year, and the enhanced federal funding during the pandemic will slowly phase out through the end of this year. KFF estimates that between 5.3 million and 14.2 million people will be disenrolled during this time. The Department of Health and Human Services says the number could be as high as 15 million, 6.8 million of whom would still be eligible for Medicaid.

Some who lose Medicaid coverage could be eligible for subsidized plans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges or other insurance, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services required states to come up with plans on how they might mitigate loss of insurance during this so-called “unwinding” period. But KFF says the change in policy could lead to an increase in the number of people who lack health insurance.

Immigration

The number of apprehensions of people trying to enter the U.S. illegally at the southwest border remains historically high, but since our last report in January, the situation has changed markedly. In part due to seasonal trends and policies implemented by the Biden administration, the number of apprehensions significantly declined in January and February — to numbers not seen since shortly after Biden took office.

On March 24, Biden boasted that “the number of migrants arriving on our southern border has dropped precipitously.”

The number of apprehensions rose in March, but still remained well below the number from March 2022. However, an immigration expert cautioned the U.S. may be seeing the “calm before the storm” should the Biden administration end Title 42, a public health law the Trump administration invoked early in the pandemic that allows border officials to immediately return many of those caught trying to enter the country illegally.

Looking at the entirety of Biden’s time in office, and to even out the seasonal changes in border crossings, we compare the most recent 12 months on record with the year prior to him taking office. And for the past 12 months ending in March, the latest figures available, apprehensions totaled 2,246,798, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s 342% higher than during Trump’s last year in office.

Apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol hit 221,710 in December, the second highest monthly total on record. But in January, that number dropped nearly 42% to 128,936. And it remained about the same in February, at 130,024. (Those figures were 13% and 18% lower than the same months in 2022.) The number rose in March to 162,317, though that’s 23% below the level in March 2022.

According to Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, part of the drop was likely due to seasonal factors. January tends to be a slow month for illegal immigration, because of the holiday season across Latin America.

But Biden administration policies also played a role, he said. In early January, Biden unveiled several border enforcement initiatives that included expanding the “parole” process for Venezuelans to Nicaraguans, Haitians and Cubans, allowing applicants a two-year work permit if they have a sponsor in the U.S. and they pass a background check.

At the same time, the administration expanded Title 42 to include Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti, meaning people from those countries caught illegally crossing into the U.S. could be immediately expelled.

Those changes contributed to the declining number of apprehensions at the border to a more manageable level in January and February, Ruiz Soto said. But that may change dramatically if the Biden administration follows through with its plan to end Title 42 on May 11, when the policy is set to expire, he said.

“That could incentivize increased migration in April,” Ruiz Soto said, and could lead to a “significant surge” in May. If so, he said, the decline in apprehensions in January and February could prove to have been just a temporary lull.

In anticipation of the end of Title 42, the Biden administration has been increasing expedited removals under Title 8, which stipulates that someone caught trying to cross illegally is barred from legal entry for five years. Those caught attempting to cross illegally multiple times can be charged criminally.

In addition, the administration is also pursuing a rule that would mean those attempting to cross into the U.S. illegally would have a “presumption of asylum ineligibility” in the U.S. if they have failed to seek asylum in another country on their travels to the U.S.

Even with the lower numbers in January and February, the number of apprehensions remains historically very high under Biden. Part of that is due to the same people making multiple attempts to cross the border, what is known as the recidivism rate. Title 42 carries no consequences for Mexicans immediately turned around at the border, Ruiz Soto said, and so many of them try again repeatedly.

In addition, he said, there are some “push factors” encouraging migration by Mexicans. One factor is an increase in drug and cartel activity in Mexico, Ruiz Soto said. In addition, he said, “Mexico has really struggled to recover from the pandemic.”

Food Stamps

The number of people in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, increased again since our last update.

As of January, nearly 42.7 million people were receiving food assistance, the highest monthly enrollment since Biden has been in office. That figure is up 344,515 people from October, and it’s an increase of about 1.2%, or 504,274 people, from January 2021, when Biden became president. The figures come from Department of Agriculture data published this month.

Under Biden, SNAP enrollment was as low as 40.8 million in August and September 2021. Trump’s lowest month was February 2020, when the program had 36.9 million participants.

Trade Deficit

The international trade deficit has gone up under Biden.

Figures published this month by the Bureau of Economic Analysis show the U.S. imported about $909.8 billion more in goods and services than it exported over the last 12 months through February. That’s an increase of nearly $256 billion, or roughly 39%, compared with 2020.

Through the first two months of 2023, however, the trade gap in goods and services decreased $35.5 billion, or 20.3%, from the same period in 2022, the BEA said. The $945.3 billion trade deficit in 2022 was the largest on record going back to 1960.

Crude Oil Production and Imports

U.S. crude oil production averaged roughly 11.97 million barrels per day during Biden’s most recent 12 months in office (through January), according to Energy Information Administration data released in March. That was 5.7% higher than the average daily amount of crude oil produced in 2020.

Crude oil production averaged 11.88 million barrels per day throughout 2022, the EIA said. That’s the highest annual average since 2019. According to its Short-Term Energy Outlook published in April, the EIA expects crude oil production to increase to a record 12.54 million barrels per day in 2023.

Meanwhile, imports of crude oil averaged 6.27 million barrels per day in Biden’s last 12 months. That’s up nearly 6.7% from average daily imports in 2020.

The EIA projects crude oil imports will exceed exports by 2.85 million barrels per day in 2023 — which is a 6.7% increase in net imports from 2020 to 2022.

Carbon Emissions

Last year, there were about 4.96 billion metric tons of emissions from the consumption of coal, natural gas and various petroleum products, according to the EIA. That total is 1.2% more than in 2021 and 8.4% above 2020.

The EIA currently forecasts that the U.S. will have 4.79 billion metric tons of energy-related emissions in 2023. That would be a decline of 3.4% from 2022 and almost 7% below the 5.15 billion metric tons emitted pre-pandemic in 2019.

Debt and Deficits

Debt — Since our last quarterly update, the public debt, which excludes money the government owes itself, has changed only slightly. It increased $9.1 billion to over $24.6 trillion, as of April 24, bringing the total increase under Biden to $2.97 trillion. That’s 13.7% higher than it was when Biden took office — unchanged from our last report.

Deficits — So far, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the budget deficit for fiscal year 2023 is ahead of where it was at this point in fiscal 2022, when the Treasury Department said the deficit for the full fiscal cycle approached $1.38 trillion.

Through the first six months of the current fiscal year (October to March), the deficit was $1.1 trillion, or “$430 billion more than the shortfall recorded during the same period last year,” the CBO said in its most recent Monthly Budget Review.

In February, the CBO projected that the FY 2023 deficit would increase slightly to $1.41 trillion. That’s $426 billion more than it projected in May 2022, CBO said.

Gun Sales

Gun purchases appeared to decline again during the first quarter of 2023, according to numbers from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry trade group.

The NSSF estimates gun sales by tracking the number of background checks for firearm sales based on the FBI’s National Instant Background Check System, or NICS. The NSSF-adjusted figures exclude background checks unrelated to sales, such as those required for concealed-carry permits. We rely on these figures because the federal government doesn’t collect data on gun sales.

The NSSF-adjusted NICS total for background checks during the first three months of 2023 was about 4.17 million, the group reported. That’s down more than 1% from 4.21 million in the first quarter of 2022 and almost 24% lower than the first quarter of 2021.

The first quarter figure for 2023 is about 26% lower than the almost 5.63 million during Trump’s last quarter in 2020, which was a record year for background checks for firearm sales.

Crime

The number of murders in 70 large U.S. cities went up by 1.6% from 2020 to 2022, according to the latest reports from the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

The small increase reflects a decline in murders last year (down 5.1%) after two straight years of increases — a 33.4% jump from 2019 to 2020, before Biden took office (based on statistics from 67 large cities) and a much smaller 6.2% increase from 2020 to 2021, Biden’s first year in office (based on 70 large cities).

Despite last year’s decrease, the number of murders — 9,138 in 2022 — is not back down to the pre-pandemic 2019 level, which totaled 6,406, though the latter figure is based on three fewer law enforcement agencies.

AH Datalytics, an independent criminal justice data analysis group, has found murders are continuing to go down in 2023. Its work, based on publicly available information from 73 large law enforcement agencies nationwide, shows a 10.2% decline in murders as of April 26, compared with the same period last year — with more than half of the agencies’ figures updated as of this month. 

From 2020 to 2022, the Major Cities Chiefs Association also found a 7.5% increase in the number of rapes, a 1.8% rise in robberies and a 14.1% increase in aggravated assaults.

We won’t have nationwide crime figures from the FBI for 2022 until this fall. As we’ve reported in our last two Biden’s Numbers updates, the FBI estimated that “violent and property crime remained consistent between 2020 and 2021.”

There have been several mass murders in the country in the last few years, including the May 2022 killings of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and 10 people in a racially motivated attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and more recently, the killing of three children and three adults at a school in Nashville in March. In response to these mass shootings, Biden has repeatedly called for a ban on semi-automatic weapons and large capacity magazines.

The Gun Violence Archive determined there were 36 mass murders in 2022, compared with 28 in 2021, 21 in 2020 and 31 in 2019. The group defines “mass murder” as a single incident in which at least four people were killed, not including the shooter.

Another gun violence database created by Mother Jones provides a count of “mass shootings,” defined as three or more victims in a shooting in a public place. Unlike in the Gun Violence Archives database, incidents in private homes or stemming from gang activity or robberies are not included. Mother Jones found 12 mass shootings in 2022, six in 2021, two in 2020 and 10 in 2019.

The FBI maintains statistics on what it calls “active shooter” incidents, in which “one or more individuals” is “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” There were 50 active shooter incidents in 2022, 61 in 2021, 40 in 2020 and 28 in 2019.

Judiciary Appointments

Supreme Court — Biden’s Supreme Court nominees still stand at one: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was confirmed on April 7, 2022, and replaced retired Justice Stephen G. Breyer, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Trump had won confirmation for two — Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — at the same point during his term.

Court of Appeals — Under Biden, 31 U.S. Court of Appeals judges have been confirmed. At the same point under Trump, 37 had been confirmed.

District Court — Biden has racked up 87 District Court confirmations, while Trump had 58 nominees confirmed at the same time during his presidency.

Two U.S. Court of Federal Claims judges also have been confirmed under Biden.

As of April 19, there were 78 federal court vacancies, with 36 nominees pending.

Home Prices & Homeownership

Home prices — The Fed’s attempts to slow inflation by repeatedly raising interest rates put the brakes on home prices last year. But the median price of existing, single-family homes has started to climb again.

The median price of an existing, single-family home sold in March was $380,000, according to the National Association of Realtors. That’s down from a year ago ($385,400), but it’s also the second consecutive month that home prices had gone up after a seven-month slide, NAR data show.

“While prices have dropped from where they were at their peak this time last year, they are still above 2021 prices in many markets,” Lindsay McLean, the CEO of HomeLister told gobankingrates.com. “Mortgage rates have stabilized a bit and offer activity seems to be resuming, as buyers are slowly coming back to the table.”

The Fed began raising interest rates on March 16, 2022, increasing rates last month for the ninth time in 12 months.

The median price of an existing, single-family home reached a high of $420,900 in June, according to the NAR. But, as mortgage rates continued to climb, prices tumbled for seven consecutive months, dropping to $365,400 in January.

Despite the swing in prices, the March median price was 23.4% higher than it had been in January 2021, when Biden took office. Annual home prices have been rising since 2012, in large part because of a high demand and relatively low inventory, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Homeownership — Homeownership rates have remained virtually unchanged under Biden.

The homeownership rate, which the Census Bureau measures as the percentage of “occupied housing units that are owner-occupied,” was 65.9% in the fourth quarter of 2022 — similar to the 65.8% rate during Trump’s last quarter in office. (Usual word of caution: The bureau warns against making comparisons with the fourth quarter of 2020, because of pandemic-related restrictions on in-person data collection.) 

The rate peaked under Trump in the second quarter of 2020 at 67.9%. The highest homeownership rate on record was 69.2% in 2004, when George W. Bush was president.

Refugees

Biden remains far from fulfilling his ambitious campaign goal of accepting up to 125,000 refugees a year.

As president, Biden set the cap on refugee admissions for fiscal year 2023 at 125,000 – just as he did in fiscal year 2022. To achieve that goal, the administration would have to admit an average of 10,417 refugees per month.

However, in fiscal year 2022, the administration accepted only 25,465 refugees, or 2,122 per month, according to State Department data. In the first six months of fiscal year 2023, which began Oct. 1, the administration increased its monthly average, welcoming 18,429 refugees, or 3,072 per month. (See “Refugee Admissions Report” for monthly data from 2000 through 2023.)

Overall, the U.S. has admitted 53,904 refugees in Biden’s first full 26 months in office, or 2,073 refugees per month, the data show. That’s about 12% higher than the 1,845 monthly average during the four years under Trump, who significantly reduced the admission of refugees. (Technical point: For both presidents, our monthly averages include only full months in office, excluding the month of January 2017 and January 2021, when administrations overlapped.)

In its report to Congress for fiscal year 2023, the State Department said “we are beginning to make progress towards fulfilling President Biden’s ambitious admissions target.” It is true that the average monthly refugee admissions have increased under Biden. The 3,072 monthly average in the first six months of fiscal year 2023 is the highest it has been for the same six-month period since fiscal year 2017, which includes months under both Trump and his predecessor, President Barack Obama.

But if it maintains its current pace, the administration would accept 36,864 refugees in fiscal year 2023 — which is much higher than last fiscal year, but far short of Biden’s campaign goal of 125,000.

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Lundh, Erik and Ataman Ozyildirim. “Probability of US Recession Remains Elevated.” The Conference Board. 12 Apr 2023.

Federal Reserve Bank. “Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement.” 22 Mar 2023.

“The Biden Plan for Securing Our Values as a Nation of Immigrants.” Biden campaign. Undated, accessed 8 Apr 2022.

State Department. “The Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2022.” Press release. 8 Oct 2021.

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State Department. “Refugee Admissions Report as of March 31, 2023.” Accessed 24 Apr 2023.

State Department. “Report to Congress on Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2023.” 8 Sep 2022.

“NSSF-Adjusted NICS Background Checks for January 2023.” Dealer Wire. 3 Feb 2023

“NSSF-Adjusted NICS Background Checks for February 2023.” Dealer Wire. 3 Mar 2023.

“NSSF-Adjusted NICS Background Checks for January 2023.” Dealer Wire. 14 Apr 2023.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Persons, Households, Benefits, and Average Monthly Benefit per Person & Household. Accessed 19 Apr 2023.

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. U.S. Trade in Goods and Services, 1960-present. Accessed 19 Apr 2023.

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. “U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, February 2023.” 5 Apr 2023.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. U.S. Field Production of Crude Oil. Accessed 24 Apr 2023.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. U.S. Imports of Crude Oil. Accessed 24 Apr 2023.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. U.S. Net Imports of Crude Oil. Accessed 24 Apr 2023.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Monthly Energy Review, March 2023.” Table 11.1 Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Energy Consumption by Source. 28 Mar 2023.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Short-Term Energy Outlook, April 2023.” 11 Apr 2023.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Short-Term Energy Outlook, April 2023.” Table 4a. U.S. Petroleum and Other Liquids Supply, Consumption, and Inventories. 11 Apr 2023.

Congressional Budget Office. “Monthly Budget Review: March 2023.” 10 Apr 2023.

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U.S. Department of Treasury. Debt to the Penny. Accessed 25 Apr 2023.

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Tolbert, Jennifer and Meghana Ammula. “10 Things to Know About the Unwinding of the Medicaid Continuous Enrollment Provision.” Kaiser Family Foundation. 5 Apr 2023.

Williams, Elizabeth et al. “Fiscal and Enrollment Implications of Medicaid Continuous Coverage Requirement During and After the PHE Ends.” Kaiser Family Foundation. 10 May 2022.

Department of Health and Human Services, Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. “Unwinding the Medicaid Continuous Enrollment Provision: Projected Enrollment Effects and Policy Approaches.” 19 Aug 2022.

Major Cities Chiefs Association. Violent Crime Survey – National Totals. Year End Comparison January 1 to December 31, 2022, and 2021. 10 Feb 2022.

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The post Biden’s Numbers, April Update appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Quick Take

The three-day National Rifle Association convention in Indianapolis allowed attendees to carry firearms, except for a two-hour period when former President Donald Trump and other leaders spoke in a hall secured by the Secret Service. Yet, social media posts from a Democratic advocacy group misleadingly claimed that “guns were BANNED at the NRA convention.”

Full Story

There have been more than 160 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2023 as of April 21, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines “mass shooting” as any incident that involves at least four victims who were either shot or killed. Such shootings have led to calls for gun control from Democratic leaders, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Many Republican leaders oppose restrictions on firearms and some attended the three-day National Rifle Association convention in mid-April in Indianapolis, Indiana, to speak against gun control.  

While GOP leaders advocate for the right to bear arms, guns are not allowed at some political events involving former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is reportedly considering running for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.

But Occupy Democrats, an advocacy group that has previously posted false or misleading claims on social media, posted memes on Facebook misleadingly claiming that guns were not allowed at the NRA convention and an upcoming GOP event in Utah.

A post from Occupy Democrats shared on April 14 said, “Republicans want to turn schools into maximum security prisons, but meanwhile guns are BANNED from today’s NRA conference, because spoiler alert, guns are … DANGEROUS.”

A post from the same group on April 17 claimed: “Guns were just BANNED at the Utah Republican convention where DeSantis is speaking this month. Guns were BANNED at the NRA convention.”

But guns were mostly allowed at the NRA convention held from April 14 to 16 — except at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum on April 14, where Trump and other leaders spoke. The Secret Service did not permit guns during the forum.

Guidelines for the NRA convention state that “[d]uring the 152nd NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits, personal firearms may be carried in the Indiana Convention Center. When carrying your firearm, always adhere to all federal, state, and local laws.”

Indiana gun laws generally allow individuals 18 years or older to carry a handgun without a license.

“Special Note for those attending the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum (Friday April 14th 2:00pm):  Please check the events page at NRAAM.org for a list of restricted items mandated by the United States Secret Service. This only applies to those attending the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum,” the NRA guidelines added.

Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence and other elected officials — including Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson — spoke at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum on April 14 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. The Secret Service controlled security for the room during that time and did not allow guns at that location. 

“U.S. Secret Service will control security within Hall A of the Indiana Convention Center and require attendees of the forum to be screened through magnetometers before entry. You will be subject to a search of your person and belongings,” the NRA noted on its website.

“Per the U.S. SECRET SERVICE, firearms, firearm accessories, knives, and other items WILL NOT BE PERMITTED in Hall A. For a full list of prohibited items, please click here. Read the list of prohibited items carefully before traveling to the event. You will not be allowed in Hall A with any of the items on this list,” the NRA added. 

Guns were allowed in the other areas of the convention. In addition, an exhibit hall featured a variety of weapons at the convention, which was expected to attract more than 70,000 people.

Guns were also not allowed during Trump’s speech at the 2022 NRA Convention in Houston — which was held just days after the May 24 shooting of 19 children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas. Guns were permitted at other events during the convention.

Utah GOP Convention Will Allow Guns

The Utah Republican Party’s 2023 Organizing Convention on April 22 is scheduled to feature DeSantis as the keynote speaker — as noted in the post by Occupy Democrats.

While it is true that some rallies and events with scheduled appearances by DeSantis have not allowed guns, the Occupy Democrats post wrongly said that guns are banned at the Utah convention. 

The Utah Republican Party said in an April 4 Facebook post that the convention will follow state law, which permits guns at such events.

Utah gun laws allow anyone 21 and older who can lawfully possess a firearm to carry a loaded firearm in public — whether it is concealed or not. Individuals 18 and up are allowed to open carry a “statutorily ‘unloaded’ (two mechanisms to fire)” firearm if they don’t have a concealed weapons license.

“We wish to clarify some rumors floating around. We will have some increased security for [the] convention, no doubt. As far as firearms are concerned, all state laws will be followed. Utah is an amazing second amendment state and we will keep it that way!! So anyone claiming firearms will not be allowed at the UTGOP convention is either lying to you or they are misinformed,” the Utah GOP said. 

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Allen, Greg. “Eyeing a run for president, Ron DeSantis wants to ‘Make America Florida‘.” NPR. 6 Mar 2023. 

Allen, Jonathan. “Trump says mass shootings are not ‘a gun problem’ as 2024 GOP hopefuls pledge loyalty to the NRA.” NBC News. 14 Apr 2023.

Cathey, Libby. “After Nashville shooting, Republican lawmakers again call gun action ‘premature‘.” ABC News. 28 Mar 2023. 

Davis, Charles R. “Firearms banned at events with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has argued ‘gun-free’ zones are less safe.” Business Insider. 8 Aug 2022. 

Gaudiano, Nicole. “NRA says it plans to ‘showcase over 14 acres of the latest guns and gear’ at its convention days after the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting.” Business Insider. 27 May 2022.

Gregorian, Dareh. “Gun owners, protesters and Donald Trump converge on Houston for NRA event.” NBC News. 27 May 2022.

Hernandez, Joe. “Guns are banned during Trump’s upcoming speech at the NRA conference.” NPR. 25 May 2022.

National Rifle Association. “Frequently Asked Questions.” Accessed 18 Apr 2023. 

National Rifle Association. “JOIN US FOR THE 152ND NRA ANNUAL MEETINGS & EXHIBITS IN INDIANAPOLIS, IN!.” Accessed 18 Apr 2023. 

Joshi, Saumya. “US President Joe Biden Urges Congress To Pass Stricter Gun Control Laws.” Republic World. 17 Apr 2023. 

Magdaleno, Johnny. “Not everyone can carry a firearm starting July 1 in Indiana. Here’s what remains illegal.” IndyStar. Updated 18 Jul 2022.

National Rifle Association. “NRA-ILA Leadership Forum.” Accessed 18 Apr 2023. 

National Constitution Center. “Right to Bear Arms.” Accessed 18 Apr 2022. 

FactCheck.org. “Tag: Occupy Democrats.” Accessed 18 Apr 2023. 

ABC News. “Trump, Pence speak at NRA convention.” 14 Apr 2023. 

U.S. Concealed Carry Association. “Indiana Concealed Carry Reciprocity Map & Gun Laws.” Updated 22 Mar 2022. 

Utah Carry Laws. “Utah Firearm Laws.” Accessed 18 Apr 2023. 

Ward, Myah. “‘We need you all’: Harris takes White House message on guns to Nashville.” Politico. 7 Apr 2023.

Wolfe, Elizabeth and Raja Razek. “Tennessee House GOP expels 2 Democrats in retaliation over gun control protest, on ‘sad day for democracy’.” CNN. 7 Apr 2023.

The post Posts Mislead on Rules for Guns at NRA Convention, Utah GOP Event appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

Here’s how the United States has fared since President Joe Biden took office two years ago:

• The economy added 10.7 million jobs under Biden, putting the total 1.2 million higher than before the pandemic.

• The unemployment rate dropped back to 3.5%; unfilled job openings surged, with over 1.7 for every unemployed jobseeker.

• Inflation roared back to the highest level in over 40 years before slowing markedly in late 2022. Overall, consumer prices are up nearly 14%. Gasoline is up 39.1%.

• Wages rose briskly, by 9.5%. But after adjusting for inflation, “real” weekly earnings went down 4.1%.

• The number of people without health insurance went down by 4.2 million.

• The trade deficit for 2022 is still on pace to set a new record.

• Economic growth has bounced back after two consecutive quarters of negative growth, and corporate profits reached a new high.
  

• Crude oil production has increased over 4%, and crude oil imports are up 7.5%.

• Gun purchases, as measured by background checks for firearm sales, declined for the second consecutive year.

• The number of people receiving federal food assistance has increased slightly.

• The publicly held debt is up 13.7%, even as annual deficits have declined.

• Apprehensions of those trying to illegally cross the southwest border into the U.S. are up 351% for the past 12 months, compared with President Donald Trump’s last year in office.

• Stocks performed poorly. The S&P 500-stock index inched up 3.1%.

Analysis

This is our fifth edition of “Biden’s Numbers,” which we first posted in January 2022 and updated on April 14, July 21 and Oct. 14. It is designed to provide an accurate statistical measure of how the U.S. has fared under Biden. We’ll continue to publish new editions with fresh data on a quarterly basis.

As we said when we posted “Obama’s Numbers” and “Trump’s Numbers,” opinions will differ on how much credit or blame any president deserves for things that happen during his time in office. We make no judgment on that.

Jobs and Unemployment

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

Employment — The U.S. economy added 10,726,000 jobs between Biden’s inauguration and December, the latest month for which data are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The December figure is 1,239,000 higher than the February 2020 peak of employment before COVID-19 forced massive shutdowns and layoffs.

One major category of jobs is still lagging, however. Government employment is still 438,000 jobs short of the pre-pandemic peak — including 248,000 public school teachers and other local education workers. 

Unemployment — The unemployment rate fell from 6.3% at the time Biden took office to 3.5% in December — a decline of 2.8 percentage points. The current rate is exactly where it was in the months just before the pandemic.

That’s uncommonly low. Since 1948, when BLS began keeping records, the jobless rate has been at or below 3.5% for only 59 months, or 6.6% of the time. Three of those months were in 2022 and three others were during the Trump years, just before the pandemic. Before that, the rate hadn’t been that low 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 after the Federal Reserve began a steep series of interest-rate increases aimed at cooling the economy to bring down price inflation.

The number had slipped down to just 10.5 million on the last business day of November, the most recent month on record. That’s still an increase of over 3.2 million openings — or nearly 45% — during Biden’s time.

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

The number of job openings in December is set to be released Feb. 1.

Labor Force Participation — One reason many job openings go unfilled is that millions of Americans left the workforce during the pandemic and haven’t returned. The labor force participation rate (the percentage of the total population over age 16 that is either employed or actively seeking work) has inched up slightly during Biden’s time, from 61.3% in January 2021 to 62.3% in December.

That’s an increase of only 1 percentage point, and still leaves the rate well below the pre-pandemic level of 63.3% for February 2020.

The rate peaked at 67.3% more than two decades ago, during the first four months of 2000. Even before the pandemic economists predicted further declines due largely to the aging population. The most recent 10-year economic projection by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts the rate will rise only to 62.4% by the middle of this year — still well below the pre-pandemic level — then resume its long-term slide and drop to 61.4% by the end of 2032.

Manufacturing Jobs — During the presidential campaign, Biden promised he had a plan to create a million new manufacturing jobs — and whether it’s his doing or not, the number is rising briskly.

As of December, the U.S. added 750,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden’s time, a 6.2% increase in the space of 23 months, according to BLS. Furthermore, the December total is 149,000, or 1.2% above the number of manufacturing jobs in February 2020, before the pandemic forced plant closures and layoffs.

During Trump’s four years, the economy lost 182,000 manufacturing jobs, or 1.4%, largely due to the pandemic.

Wages and Inflation

CPI — Inflation came roaring back under Biden, but has slowed dramatically in the most recent six months.

Overall, during his first 23 months in office the Consumer Price Index rose 13.7%.

It was for a time the worst inflation in decades. The 12 months ending last June saw a 9.1% increase in the CPI (before seasonal adjustment), which the Bureau of Labor Statistics said was the biggest such increase since the 12 months ending in November 1981.

But the worst may now be over. The CPI rose 5.4% in the first half of last year, but only 0.9% in the last half. In December, the CPI actually declined slightly, by 0.1%. The BLS measure of gasoline prices plunged 27.5% in the last half of 2022 and went down 9.4% in December alone.

Gasoline Prices — The price of gasoline has gyrated wildly under Biden.

During the first 57 weeks of his administration, the national average price of regular gasoline at the pump rose by $1.15 (or 48.4%) as motorists resumed travel and the economy bounced back after pandemic lockdowns.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and the price shot up by another $1.48 per gallon in just 16 weeks as world oil markets were disrupted by the West’s efforts to punish Russia, the world’s third-largest oil producer (after the U.S. and Saudi Arabia). Gasoline prices peaked briefly at a record high of just over $5 per gallon in the week ending June 13.

Over the next six months the price drifted down to a low of $3.09 the week ending Dec. 26, and now has gone up again to $3.31 the week ending Jan. 16, the most recent on record.

So after all the ups and downs, the most recent price is 93 cents higher than in the week before Biden took office, an increase of 39.1%

Prices are expected to rise further this year. In its most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted that gasoline prices would average $3.32 a gallon in 2023.

Wages — Wages also have gone up under Biden, but not as fast as prices.

Average weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers went up 9.5% during Biden’s first 23 months in office, according to monthly figures compiled by the BLS. Those production and nonsupervisory workers make up 81% of all employees in the private sector.

But inflation ate up all that gain and more. What are called “real” weekly earnings, adjusted for inflation and measured in dollars valued at their average level in 1982-84, actually declined 4.1% during that time.

But recently real wages have been rising as inflation has moderated. During the last half of 2022, real weekly earnings rose 1.3%.

Economic Growth

The U.S. economy has improved since our last report.

The nation’s economy posted a surprisingly strong third quarter in 2022 after two straight quarters of contraction, and it appears that the growth continued in the fourth quarter before slowing again in 2023.

While concerns remain about a pending recession, some forecast it will be relatively mild or may not happen at all.

The real gross domestic product, which accounts for inflation, expanded at an annual rate of 3.2% in the third quarter of 2022 after contracting at an annual rate of 1.6% in the first quarter and 0.6% in the second quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The BEA’s first official estimate for the fourth quarter of 2022 won’t be released until Jan. 26. But the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s “GDP Now” estimated that, as of Jan. 20, the economy increased at an annual rate of 3.5% in the fourth quarter. 

For the year, the most recent median forecast of the Federal Reserve Board members and Federal Reserve Bank presidents issued on Dec. 14 projected 0.5% growth for all of 2022. The Summary of Economic Projections released by the Fed at its Dec. 14 meeting also showed the central bank expected a real GDP gain of 0.5% in 2023 and 1.6% in 2024.

A majority of U.S. CEOs surveyed by The Conference Board expect a recession in 2023, although they anticipate it will be relatively mild.

“Ninety-eight percent of CEOs in the U.S. think there is going to be a recession — but it’s going to be short and shallow,” Dana Peterson, the Conference Board’s chief economist, told the Wall Street Journal.

Some economists even say a downturn isn’t inevitable, as the Associated Press reported.

Corporate Profits

Under Biden, corporate profits have reached new heights, although the most recent quarter showed a leveling off. 

After-tax corporate profits set a record at $2.75 trillion in 2021. During the third quarter of 2022, corporate profits hit an annual rate of nearly $2.9 trillion — which was a slight dip from the $3 trillion record set in the previous quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

“Profits decreased less than 0.1 percent in the third quarter after increasing 4.6 percent in the second quarter,” the BEA said in a Dec. 22 release.

Even with a slight dip, the current quarterly rate is 37% higher than the full-year figure for 2020, the year before Biden took office, as estimated by the BEA. (See line 45.)

Consumer Sentiment

Under Biden, high inflation has weakened consumer confidence in the economy, although there has been a slight uptick since our last report. 

The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers reported that its preliminary monthly Index of Consumer Sentiment for January was 64.6. That’s slightly better than our last report – when the index was 58.6 in September — and significantly higher than a record low of 50 in June. But it’s still 14.4 points lower than it was when Biden took office in January 2021. 

Joanne W. Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers, attributed the recent rise to “higher incomes and easing inflation.” 

“Consumer sentiment remained low from a historical perspective but continued lifting for the second consecutive month, rising 8% above December and reaching about 4% below a year ago,” Hsu said in a statement on the preliminary survey results for January. “Current assessments of personal finances surged 16% to its highest reading in eight months on the basis of higher incomes and easing inflation.”

Stock Markets

Stock market gains that were made in Biden’s first year were all but wiped out in 2022 — which was the worst year for Wall Street since 2008.

Under the past two presidents, the stock markets went steadily up. The S&P 500-stock index rose 166% over the eight years Obama was in office, and it climbed another 67.8% during Trump’s four years. 

But since Biden took office, the S&P 500 is up a bare 3.1% as of the close of the market on Jan. 20.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is made up of 30 large corporations, did somewhat better, eking out a 7.0% gain in the two years since he took office.

But the NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies including many in the technology sector that performed particularly poorly in 2022, fell sharply — down 17.2% since Biden took office. 

Health Insurance

Early release figures from the National Health Interview Survey show a drop in the number and percentage of people who lacked health insurance during Biden’s time in office. The latest figures show that 27.4 million people, or 8.3% of the population, were uninsured at the time they were interviewed in the first six months of 2022, compared with 31.6 million people, or 9.7%, who were uninsured in 2020, the year before Biden was sworn in.

That’s a decrease of 4.2 million people, or 1.4 percentage points.

The NHIS is a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the data collection is performed by the Census Bureau in face-to-face interviews.

From 2020 to 2021, the NHIS found a drop in the number of uninsured people of just 1.6 million, which it said was not a significant difference. But there was a more sizable decline in the first six months of 2022.

The percentage of Americans under age 65 who had insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act exchanges, such as HealthCare.gov, went up from 3.8% in 2020 to 4.3% in 2021, a figure that held steady for the first six months of 2022.

The Census Bureau’s annual report, which measures those who lacked insurance for the entire year, won’t be available until this fall.

Immigration

The number of apprehensions of people trying to enter the U.S. illegally at the southwest border continues to hover near historic highs.

To even out the seasonal changes in border crossings, our measure compares the most recent 12 months on record with the year prior to a president taking office. And for the past 12 months ending in November, the latest figures available, apprehensions totaled 2,291,433, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s 351% higher than during Trump’s last year in office.

Since our last report in October, apprehensions rose, after a slight dip in the summer months. The number of apprehensions in September, October and November averaged just over 206,000 per month. That’s lower than the peak of 241,136 in May of last year, but looking at the entirety of Biden’s time in office, apprehensions have never been higher in history, dating back to at least 1925.

Facing heightened criticism from Republicans, Biden made his first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border as president on Jan. 8 with a four-hour visit to El Paso. Ahead of the trip, Biden spoke to reporters about border security and enforcement, acknowledging that it was “a complicated issue.”

After faulting congressional Republicans for failing to support “a comprehensive immigration plan to fix the system completely” (although, as we wrote, the sweeping immigration plan Biden proposed on his first day in office was also opposed by some Democrats and never came up for a vote), Biden announced several executive actions he was taking “to stiffen enforcement for those who try to come without a legal right to stay, and to put in place a faster process — I emphasize a ‘faster process’ — to decide a claim of asylum.”

Among the initiatives in Biden’s plan is expanding the “parole” process for Venezuelans to Nicaraguans, Haitians and Cubans, allowing applicants a two-year work permit if they have a friend or relative in the U.S. sponsor them and they pass a background check. The plan also includes adding more asylum officers and immigration judges to process asylum claims more quickly.

Biden has sought to terminate Title 42, a public health law invoked in response to the pandemic in March 2020 that allowed border officials to immediately return many of those caught trying to enter the country illegally. The Supreme Court in December extended the policy for at least two more months until the court hears arguments on the case in February.

Once Title 42 ends, Biden said, migrants will have to use an app and book an appointment to schedule an interview on their asylum claims, but they will have to wait outside the country until then. Those who do not go through proper channels will be expelled and will be subject to a five-year ban on reentry.

Trade Deficit

The U.S. imported almost $965.2 billion more in goods and services than it exported over the last 12 months through November, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis figures published this month. The international trade deficit in that period was $311.2 billion higher, or about 47.6% more, than in 2020.

As of November, the goods and services deficit had increased $120.1 billion from the same 11-month period in 2021 — putting the U.S. on pace to exceed the record trade deficit from the previous year.

Oil Production and Imports

U.S. crude oil production averaged roughly 11.79 million barrels per day during Biden’s most recent 12 months in office (ending in October), according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data published in late December. That was over 4% higher than the average daily amount of crude oil produced in 2020.

In its Short-Term Energy Outlook for January, the EIA projected that crude oil production averaged 11.86 million barrels per day in 2022, which would be the highest average since 2019. The EIA expects crude oil production to increase to 12.41 millions barrels per day in 2023, which would be a new record.

As for crude oil imports in Biden’s last 12 months, the U.S. brought in about 6.32 million barrels per day on average. That’s up more than 7.5% from average daily imports in 2020.

Carbon Emissions

There was no change in U.S. carbon emissions since our last quarterly update.

In the most recent 12 months on record (ending in September), there still were almost 4.95 billion metric tons of emissions from the consumption of coal, natural gas and various petroleum products, according to the EIA. That’s over 8% more than the 4.58 billion metric tons that were emitted in 2020 — but lower than about 5.15 billion metric tons emitted in 2019.

The EIA forecasts that the U.S. will have 4.83 billion metric tons of energy-related emissions in 2023, which would be a decline of over 3% from the projected total of 4.99 billion metric tons emitted in 2022.

Gun Sales

After spiking at the start of the pandemic, gun purchases appear to have slowed for the second consecutive year, based on figures from the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Since the federal government doesn’t collect data on gun sales, the NSSF, a gun industry trade group, estimates gun sales by tracking the number of background checks for firearm sales based on the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. The NSSF-adjusted figures exclude background checks unrelated to sales, such as those required for concealed-carry permits.

Earlier this month, NSSF reported that the adjusted NICS total for background checks in 2022 was about 16.43 million. That’s the third highest annual total going back to 2000 — but it’s 11.3% lower than in 2021 and 22.1% below 2020, the current one-year record, with almost 21.1 million such background checks.

In 2019, before the pandemic, there were nearly 13.2 million.

“Though not a direct correlation to firearms sales, the NSSF-adjusted NICS data provide an additional picture of current market conditions,” the NSSF said in a statement about the numbers.

Crime

The Major Cities Chiefs Association found the number of murders in 70 large U.S. cities went down by 4.3% in the first nine months of 2022, compared with the same time period in 2021. Murders declined from 7,184 to 6,877.

The drop follows an increase in homicides of 6.2% from 2020, the year before Biden became president, to 2021, according to the same group, and a 33.4% increase from 2019 to 2020, with the latter figure from 67 law enforcement agencies.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association’s most recent report also shows a 3.4% decline in the number of rapes, an 11% increase in robberies and a 1.3% increase in aggravated assaults for the first nine months of last year.

FBI data on nationwide crime for 2022 won’t be released until the fall. As we reported in our last Biden’s Numbers update, the FBI estimated that “violent and property crime remained consistent between 2020 and 2021.” Specifically, the FBI determined violent crimes fell by 1%, while murders increased by 4.3%, but the agency said the figures “are not considered statistically significant.”

The estimates also were based on data from fewer local law enforcement agencies than usual, since the FBI had transitioned to a new system — yet some police departments, including those in New York City and Los Angeles, hadn’t done so.

Another independent analysis by AH Datalytics, an organization run by criminal justice data analysts, shows a 4.8% decline in murders from late 2021 to late 2022, as of Jan. 20. The group compiles publicly available information from more than 90 large law enforcement agencies nationwide, with most agencies reporting figures through the end of November or December.

Debts and Deficits

Debt — In the three months since our last update, the public debt, which excludes money the government owes itself, increased by over $313 billion to $24.6 trillion, as of Jan. 19. The public debt is now 13.7% higher than it was when Biden took office.

Deficits — So far, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the budget deficit for fiscal year 2023 is ahead of where it was at this point in fiscal 2022, when the Treasury Department said the deficit for the full fiscal cycle was $1.375 trillion.

Through the first three months of the current fiscal year (October to December), the deficit was $418 billion, or “$41 billion more than the shortfall recorded during the same period last year,” the CBO said in its most recent Monthly Budget Review. The nonpartisan budget agency expects in February to release its Budget and Economic Outlook, with deficit projections for the full fiscal year.

Food Stamps

The number of people in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, has gone up each month since our last update.

As of October, more than 42.3 million people were receiving food assistance. That’s over 1.4 million more people than in June, and it’s an increase of 0.4%, or over 166,000 people, from January 2021, when Biden became president. The figures come from the Department of Agriculture’s latest data.

Under Biden, SNAP enrollment was as low as 40.8 million in August and September 2021. Trump’s lowest month was February 2020, when the program had 36.9 million participants.

Home Prices & Homeownership

Home Prices — With the Federal Reserve continuing to raise rates, the once red-hot housing market has cooled off. 

The median price of an existing, single-family home sold in November was $376,700 — down from the August preliminary price ($396,300) that we used in our last report, according to the National Association of Realtors. (The final August number was even higher at $398,800.)

The median home price fell for the fifth consecutive month in November after reaching a record high of $420,900 in June, and existing home sales have declined for the 10th month in a row, NAR said.

The decline in home sales and prices comes as the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate seven times last year in an effort to slow inflation. As a result, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.33% as of Jan. 12 – up from 3.45% a year ago, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. 

Even so, the November median price was 22.3% higher than it had been in January 2021, when Biden took office. Home prices have been rising for about a decade, in large part because of a high demand and relatively low inventory, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Homeownership — Homeownership rates have remained virtually unchanged under Biden.

The homeownership rate, which the Census Bureau measures as the percentage of occupied housing units that are owner-occupied, was 66% in the third quarter of 2022 — just a shade over the 65.8% rate during Trump’s last quarter in office. (Usual word of caution: The bureau warns against making comparisons with the fourth quarter of 2020, because of pandemic-related restrictions on in-person data collection.) 

The rate peaked under Trump in the second quarter of 2020 at 67.9%. The highest homeownership rate on record was 69.2% in 2004, when George W. Bush was president.

Refugees

Biden has made only incremental progress toward fulfilling his ambitious campaign promise to accept up to 125,000 refugees into the United States each year.

On Sept. 27, the Biden administration set the cap on refugee admissions for fiscal year 2023 at 125,000 – just as it did in fiscal year 2022. To achieve the president’s goal, the administration would have to admit an average of 10,417 refugees per month.

However, in fiscal year 2022, the administration accepted only 25,465 refugees, or 2,122 per month, according to State Department data. In the first three months of fiscal year 2023, which began Oct. 1, the administration welcomed 6,750 refugees, or 2,250 per month. (See “Refugee Admissions Report” for monthly data from 2000 through 2023.)

Overall, the U.S. has admitted 42,223 refugees in Biden’s first full 23 months in office, or 1,836 refugees per month, the data show. That’s 0.5% less than the 1,845 monthly average during the four years under Trump, who significantly reduced the admission of refugees. (For both presidents, our monthly averages include only full months in office, excluding the month of January 2017 and January 2021, when administrations overlapped.)

In its report to Congress for fiscal year 2023, the State Department said “we are beginning to make progress towards fulfilling President Biden’s ambitious admissions target.” In our last report, we noted that the U.S. ended fiscal year 2022 by admitting more than 5,500 refugees in September — the highest monthly amount since January 2017.

But the Biden administration, so far, has been unable to sustain that level of admission in the new fiscal year.

Judiciary Appointments

Supreme Court — Biden has won confirmation for one Supreme Court nominee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Trump had won confirmation for two by this point in his tenure: Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Jackson replaced retired Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who was appointed by then-President Bill Clinton and served nearly three decades. 

Court of Appeals — So far, 28 U.S. Court of Appeals judges have been confirmed under Biden. At the same point in Trump’s presidency — halfway through his four years in office — 30 had been confirmed.

District Court — Biden has won confirmation for 68 District Court judges. At the same point in Trump’s term, 53 nominees had been confirmed.

Two U.S. Court of Federal Claims judges also have been confirmed under Biden.

There were 87 federal court vacancies, with 23 nominees pending, as of Jan. 20.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

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The post Biden’s Numbers, January 2023 Update appeared first on FactCheck.org.

By some counts, about 2,000 of the more than 3,100 counties in the U.S. are so-called “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” which generally means that the counties – or the state of which they are a part — oppose gun laws they deem unconstitutional. In some cases, county or state politicians have enacted laws or resolutions that direct local law enforcement not to use their resources to enforce certain state or federal gun laws.

But that does not necessarily mean “60% of counties in this country are refusing to implement the nation’s gun laws,” as Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut claimed in a Nov. 27 CNN interview.

We found some examples of sanctuary counties that still enforce gun laws, including a Colorado county that Murphy mentioned in the interview.

Also, legal experts have said that many of the declarations by states and counties are largely symbolic – meant to merely proclaim support for the protection of Second Amendment rights. As for counties, most are legally required to follow the gun laws of their state.

‘Second Amendment Sanctuaries’

Murphy and CNN’s Dana Bash started the interview by talking about President Joe Biden saying that he wants Congress to pass a new ban on the sale of “semiautomatic weapons” by the end of the year. They transitioned to discussing recent mass shootings in Virginia and Colorado, states that Bash said already have other gun laws that did not prevent those killings. 

Murphy said part of the problem is when counties decide not to enforce existing laws. He said Congress needs to consider whether to withhold funding from those jurisdictions.

“The majority of counties in this country have declared that they are not going to enforce state and federal gun laws,” Murphy said. “They have decided that they are going to essentially refuse to implement laws that are on the books. That is a growing problem in this country.”

He continued: “I think we have to have a conversation about whether we can continue to fund law enforcement in states where they are refusing to implement these gun laws. I will talk to my colleagues about what our approach should be to this problem, but 60% of counties in this country are refusing to implement the nation’s gun laws. We have got to do something about that.”

To support the claim, a congressional aide for Murphy sent us hyperlinks to stories from the Associated Press and tacticalgear.com – both of which said that about 2,000 counties, or roughly 63% of the U.S. total, have been declared sanctuaries for the Second Amendment.

Definitions for “Second Amendment sanctuaries” vary from place to place, but, generally, the term refers to jurisdictions that oppose laws they believe infringe on the gun rights of Americans. The sanctuary moniker was modeled after other so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that limit how much state and local law enforcement cooperate with the execution of federal immigration laws.

But when a location is designated a sanctuary for gun rights, that does not necessarily mean that gun laws are not being enforced in those areas – as Murphy said.

For example, in the interview, Murphy made a reference to El Paso County in Colorado, where a gunman killed five people and wounded many others at an LGBTQ nightclub on Nov. 19. That county is one of more than 30 in the state that have declared themselves a sanctuary for the Second Amendment. 

News reports said that local law enforcement in El Paso County potentially could have requested an extreme risk protection order, which, if granted by a court, would have allowed local police to temporarily confiscate the gun of the suspected shooter – who previously had been arrested in 2021 for allegedly making a bomb threat against his mother. 

ERPOs, also known as red-flag orders, aim to keep weapons away from individuals who may be a threat to themselves or others.

Colorado is one of 19 states and the District of Columbia that have red-flag laws in place, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates gun control laws. Five states – not including Colorado – permit only law enforcement to petition a court for an order.

It’s true that when Colorado’s red-flag law was being debated by the state Legislature, El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder, who opposed the legislation, made it clear that his office would not go out of its way to request protection orders.

“We’re not going to pursue these on our own, meaning the sheriff’s office isn’t going to run over and try to get a court order,” Elder said in a 2019 interview. 

The website of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office further explains that an employee of the office will not ask for an ERPO “unless exigent circumstances exist, and probable cause can be established … that a crime is being or has been committed.”

However, Elder explained that the sheriff’s office will enforce a court order issued at the request of a family member, which also is allowed in Colorado.

“The fact of the matter is, we support the rule of law. And if a judge issues an order of the court, then it is up to law enforcement to execute that order,” Elder said.

The AP story from early September said that 37 sanctuary counties in Colorado issued a total of 45 ERPOs, or orders for firearms to be surrendered, in 2020 and 2021 — “a fifth fewer than non-sanctuary counties did per resident.” 

In El Paso County, courts approved eight out of 39 petitions in that time period, according to a May story from Denver’s 9News. In nearby Douglas County, another sanctuary county, 11 of 17 petitions were granted, the local NBC News affiliate said.

Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock, a Republican, told Kaiser Health News in June that his office filed four of the protection orders.

So some sanctuaries are still enforcing gun laws — although perhaps not as aggressively as non-sanctuaries.

‘Symbolic’ Measures

In an interview with FactCheck.org, Sheila Simon, an assistant professor at Southern Illinois University School of Law and a former Democratic lieutenant governor of Illinois, said that in many cases sanctuary ordinances and resolutions are mostly a “communicative device.”

“There is a lot of activity where the local government takes a position on some state or federal law and says, ‘We oppose this. We want our representatives not to vote in favor of this,'” she said. “And the sanctuary ordinances are like a step further. They are like, ‘We really want you to know that we really don’t like these laws.'” 

But Simon told us that even officials in what is recognized as the nation’s first Second Amendment sanctuary “understood that this is more of a statement than a change in law or law enforcement.”

That county, Illinois’ Effingham County, passed its resolution in 2018, saying, in part, that it “will prohibit its employees from enforcing the unconstitutional actions of the state government.” 

Yet the county’s former state’s attorney, Bryan Kibler, whom Simon said proposed the wording himself, acknowledged at the time that the ordinance was largely symbolic and would not dictate how the sheriff’s office enforced gun laws, according to the Effingham Daily News.

As another example, according to an article published on tacticalgear.com, all of Nebraska’s counties are considered sanctuaries because, in 2021, Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts signed a proclamation designating the entire state a “Second Amendment Sanctuary State.”

“The White House and U.S. Congress have announced their intention to pursue measures that would infringe on the right to keep and bear arms,” the proclamation says, adding that, “Nebraska will stand up against federal overreach and attempts to regulate gun ownership and use.” 

But a statement from Ricketts’ office said the proclamation was a “symbolic” effort reaffirming the state’s “support for the right to bear arms.”

Fifty-four of Nebraska’s 93 counties have separately declared themselves to be sanctuaries, according to the list on tacticalgear.com.

Legal Arguments

In addition, Simon and other law experts have said that most counties are legally required to follow state gun laws.

“Whenever there is a conflict between a local ordinance and a state law, the state law wins,” Simon said. “This is just the nature of how state and local government works.”

However, Darrell Miller, a Duke law professor and co-director of its Center for Firearms Law, told us that whether there are consequences for not implementing state law depends on a number of factors.

“Ordinarily, state and local law enforcement are obliged to enforce state law,” he wrote in an email. “The consequences of a county official, for example, refusing to enforce state law depends very much on the politics of the state, the willingness of state officials to remove or otherwise sanction local officials who defy state officials, and the legal mechanisms available for state officials to compel local enforcement.”

On the other hand, Miller said that the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents the federal government from commandeering state law enforcement to enforce federal laws.

But he said that if a local sheriff instructed a deputy not to follow a federal gun regulation, federal law enforcement could still enforce the law in that jurisdiction, and local law enforcement would not be able to stop them.

In an email to FactCheck.org, Murphy’s office said that “so-called ‘Second Amendment Sanctuary’ counties are counties that have declared they will not enforce or allow enforcement of state and federal gun safety legislation.” 

Some have – but not every one of them has gone that far. 

Ultimately, we cannot say how many of the nearly 2,000 sanctuary counties enforce state or federal gun laws. But at least some of them do, which contradicts Murphy’s statement that “60% of counties … are refusing to implement the nation’s gun laws.”

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

The post Exploring Sen. Murphy’s Claim About ‘Second Amendment Sanctuaries’ appeared first on FactCheck.org.

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.

Labor Force Participation — One reason many job openings go unfilled is that millions of Americans left the workforce during the pandemic and haven’t returned. The labor force participation rate (the percentage of the total population over age 16 that is either employed or actively seeking work) has inched up slightly during Biden’s time, from 61.4% in January 2021 to 62.3% in September.

That’s an increase of only 0.9 percentage points, and still leaves the rate well below the pre-pandemic level of 63.4% for February 2020.

The rate peaked at 67.3% during the first four months of 2000, and even before the pandemic economists predicted further declines due largely to the aging population. The most recent 10-year economic projection by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts the rate will rise only to 62.4% by the middle of next year — still well below the pre-pandemic level — then resume its long-term slide and drop to 61.4% by the end of 2032.

Manufacturing Jobs — During the presidential campaign, Biden promised he had a plan to create a million new manufacturing jobs — and whether it’s his doing or not, the number is rising briskly.

As of September, the U.S. added 696,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden’s time, a 5.7% increase in the space of 20 months, according to BLS. Furthermore, the September total is 95,000 above the number of manufacturing jobs in February 2020, before the pandemic forced plant closures and layoffs.

During Trump’s four years, the economy lost 182,000 manufacturing jobs, or 1.4%, largely due to the pandemic.

Wages and Inflation

CPI — Inflation came roaring back under Biden — with prices rising faster than they have in over 40 years.

During his first 20 months in office, the Consumer Price Index rose 13.2%.

It’s the worst inflation in decades. The 12 months ending in June saw a 9.1% increase in the CPI (before seasonal adjustment), which the Bureau of Labor Statistics said was the biggest such increase since the 12 months ending in November 1981. And the rise during the most recent 12 months, ending in September, was only slightly less — 8.2%

The current inflation is hitting especially hard where people experience it most regularly — at the gas pump and at the grocery store. In the most recent 12 months, gasoline prices increased 18.2% and food at home increased 13%, the BLS said.

And with winter weather approaching, the cost of home heating is going up at an alarming rate. BLS said the 12-month rise in household energy costs — a mix including electricity, piped gas, propane and home heating oil — was 20.8% as of September.

Gasoline Prices — The price of gasoline has gyrated wildly under Biden.

During the first 57 weeks of his administration, the national average price of regular gasoline at the pump rose briskly by $1.15 (or 48.4%) as motorists resumed travel and the economy bounced back after pandemic lockdowns.

Then, in the first 16 weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the price shot up by another $1.48 per gallon as world oil markets were disrupted by the West’s efforts to punish Russia, the world’s third largest oil producer (after the U.S. and Saudi Arabia). Gasoline prices reached a record high of just over $5 per gallon in the week ending June 13.

After that the price dropped steadily for 14 weeks, to $3.65 in the week ending Sept. 19, a decline of $1.35 below the record high.

But in the past few weeks the price has again turned up, reaching $3.91 per gallon in the week ending Oct. 10.

So after all the ups and downs (mostly ups), the most recent price is $1.53 higher than in the week before Biden took office, an increase of 64.4%

Prices are not expected to ease much from there. In its most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted that gasoline prices would average $3.57 during 2023.

Wages — Wages also have gone up under Biden, but not as fast as prices.

Average weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers went up 9% during Biden’s first 20 months in office, according to monthly figures compiled by the BLS. Those production and nonsupervisory workers make up 81% of all employees in the private sector.

But inflation ate up all that gain and more. What are called “real” weekly earnings, adjusted for inflation and measured in dollars valued at their average level in 1982-84, actually declined 4.4% during that time.

Since our last report, however, wage gains have started to outpace inflation. Real weekly earnings rose 1% between June and September.

Economic Growth

The U.S. economy contracted for the second straight quarter this year, triggering concerns of a pending recession. But the string of down quarters is expected to soon end. 

The real gross domestic product, which accounts for inflation, declined at an estimated annual rate of 1.6% in the first quarter of this year and 0.6% in the second quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The back-to-back down quarters followed a 5.9% increase in real GDP in Biden’s first year.

The National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business-Cycle Dating Committee is a nonpartisan group that officially declares the start and end of a recession, and it says that most, not all, past recessions were marked by “two or more consecutive quarters of declining real GDP.” But the committee considers many other factors when declaring a recession, which it generally defines as “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.”

In addition to real GDP, the committee bases its decision on a range of monthly economic indicators, including inflation, which remained stubbornly high in September, consumer spending, which went up in August, and nonfarm payroll employment, which rose in September and has increased every month so far under Biden.

The first official estimate for the third quarter of 2022 won’t be released until Oct. 27. But the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s “GDP Now” estimated on Oct. 7 that the economy will grow by 2.9% in the third quarter. 

In May, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected the economy would expand by 3.1% in 2022. The most recent forecast of the Federal Reserve Board members and Federal Reserve Bank presidents, issued in June, produced a median estimate of a 1.7% real GDP growth (Table 1) for both 2022 and 2023.

Even so, there’s still plenty of talk of a global recession happening next year. 

“Economic growth is projected to resume in the second half of 2022, but the combination of high inflation, monetary policy tightening, and a slowing housing market is likely to tip the economy into a modest recession in the new year,” Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giant, said in a Sept. 21 press release. 

The World Bank says there’s a risk of a global recession next year. 

“Global growth is slowing sharply, with further slowing likely as more countries fall into recession,” World Bank Group President David Malpass said in a Sept. 15 statement. “My deep concern is that these trends will persist, with long-lasting consequences that are devastating for people in emerging market and developing economies.”

Correction, Oct. 17: Our story originally said that the National Bureau of Economic Research was a “government entity.” It is not. It’s a private, nonpartisan organization. We have corrected the story.

Crime

The FBI estimated that “violent and property crime remained consistent between 2020 and 2021.” Specifically, the number of violent crimes went down by an estimated 1%; the number of murders went up by 4.3%; robberies went down by 8.2%. But the figures “are not considered statistically significant,” the FBI said, which is why “the overall message is that crime remained consistent.”

The estimates also come with increased uncertainty, as we’ve explained before.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program is a voluntary reporting program. It has been transitioning to a new system for local law enforcement agencies to submit data, and as of Jan. 1, 2021, agencies were required to use what’s called the National Incident-Based Reporting System. But many, including police departments in New York City and Los Angeles, haven’t made the switch to NIBRS and aren’t included in the raw 2021 statistics.

So, the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics have provided national estimates, based on data for 66% of the U.S. population. In the past, the FBI said, annual figures accounted for 90% or more of the population.

In an Oct. 5 press release on the 2021 statistics, the FBI explains, “Together, the FBI and BJS developed and tested statistical procedures that assess the quality and completeness of NIBRS data, created methods to adjust for non-transitioned agencies, crafted estimation procedures for generating reliable and accurate national indicators as new agencies report NIBRS data, and established a semi-automated system for producing national estimates of key crime indicators on an annual basis.”

The estimated 4.3% increase in the number of murders is significantly lower than the 29.4% increase from 2019 to 2020, before Biden took office. The estimated murder rate in 2021 was 6.9 per 100,000 population, a 0.2 percentage point increase from the 6.7 rate in 2020.

The number and rate of rapes went up (by 1.2 percentage points for the rate), while aggravated assaults went down (by 2.3 percentage points for the rate). The FBI said the overall drop in violent crime was “driven mainly” by the estimated decline in robberies.

The estimated number of property crimes declined by 3.8%.

Given the FBI had to do more estimating than normal, we also looked at other sources for information on large cities.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association, which collects statistics from law enforcement agencies in big cities, found that homicides went up by 6.2% from 2020 to 2021, but its latest report shows a decline of 2.4%, comparing the first six months of 2022 to the same period in 2021. The data is from 70 law enforcement agencies.

Similarly, the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice found a 5% increase in the number of homicides from 2020 to 2021 in 22 U.S. cities, but its latest report shows a 2% decline for the first six months of 2022, compared with the same time period in 2021 in 23 cities. However, “the homicide rate remains 39% above the level prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (in the first half of 2019),” the authors note.

Another analysis, by AH Datalytics, using publicly available information from 90 larger law enforcement agencies nationwide, shows a 5.3% drop in murders so far in 2022, as of data compiled by Oct. 13, compared with 2021. The organization is run by criminal justice data analysts.

Trade

The Bureau of Economic Analysis’ most recent figures show that the U.S. imported almost $977.4 billion more in goods and services than it exported during the most recent 12 months ending in August. The international trade deficit was $323.4 billion, or about 49%, higher than in 2020. The trade gap grew more than 36% under Trump.

Through the first eight months of 2022, the U.S. imported a monthly average of $84.3 billion more in goods and services than it exported. If imports continue to exceed exports at that rate, the annual trade deficit for 2022 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time on record.

Health Insurance

The number of people without health insurance has gone down under Biden. The decrease was 1.1 million people from 2020 to 2021, according to the Census Bureau’s latest annual report.

In 2020, the year before Biden took office, 28.3 million people, or 8.6% of the population, lacked health insurance for the entire year. Those figures dropped to 27.2 million, or 8.3%, in 2021. The Census report was published in September.

As has been the case for many years, most of the population had employer-based insurance coverage in 2021. Altogether, 66% of the population had private insurance, which includes work-based plans, direct purchases, Tricare (insurance for military members and their families), and Affordable Care Act marketplace plans.

Public, or government-sponsored plans, enrolled 35.7% of the population, split nearly evenly between Medicare and Medicaid, with a small percentage (1%) on Veterans Affairs plans.

The National Health Interview Survey, which measures the number of uninsured at the time people were interviewed — as opposed to being uninsured for the entire year — found a decrease in the number of uninsured people of 1.6 million from 2020 to 2021.

Early release figures from the NHIS show those lacking health insurance declined further in the first quarter of 2022. The estimates are that 8% of the population was uninsured in the first quarter, down from 8.8% in the fourth quarter of 2021.

The chart below shows how the number of uninsured people has changed since 2016, according to the Census figures. Technical note: Due to changes in survey methods, Census says the 2018 and later figures should be compared with the 2016 and 2017 numbers from a research and bridge file. 

Income and Poverty

Household Income — Household income continued to decline in Biden’s first year.

In 2021, the Census Bureau’s measure of real median household income was $70,784, a decrease of $402, or 0.6%, from 2020. That was the second consecutive annual decrease, after median household income, when adjusted for inflation, declined $1,622 during the first year of the pandemic.

(The median figure represents the midpoint — half of all households earned more, half less.)

Prior to 2020, the real median income figure had reached a record of $72,808 in 2019, which was about $6,150 more than in 2016 – the year before Trump took office.

Poverty — As incomes declined, the rate of poverty rose slightly. 

The percentage of Americans living with income below the official poverty line went up 0.1 percentage points – from 11.5% of the population in 2020 to 11.6% in 2021. 

That was the second straight year that the poverty rate increased. Before COVID-19, the rate declined five years in a row.

The Census Bureau lists the official poverty rate in 2019 as 10.5% — seemingly the lowest rate going back to 1959, which is as far back as Census data go. But the bureau has said that the 2019 rate was probably more than half a percentage point higher than that due to lower than normal survey response rates from low-income individuals during the pandemic.

“With the nonresponse bias correction, we estimate a poverty rate of 11.1 percent in 2019, compared to the official estimate of 10.5 percent,” Census said in a September 2020 report. That would tie the 11.1% poverty rate in 1973 as the lowest on record.

In raw numbers, there were about 37.9 million people below the poverty line in 2021. That was roughly 385,000 more than in 2020, according to the Census’ latest estimates.

The official poverty rate, however, does not include government programs that benefit low-income families and individuals — such as housing and food assistance — that were expanded in COVID-19 relief bills that became law under Trump and Biden. The Census Bureau measures the impact of these programs using the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which it began publishing in 2011.

The supplemental poverty rate declined last year, from 9.2% in 2020 to 7.8% in 2021 — “the lowest SPM poverty rate since estimates were first published and the third consecutive decline,” Census said in its Sept. 18 report.

Children experienced the steepest drop in supplemental poverty, according to the bureau’s analysis. The SPM rate for kids declined to 5.2% in 2021, the lowest level on record and down 4.5 percentage points from the 2020 rate of 9.7%.

“The decline in the SPM rate for children was largely driven by stimulus payments and the refundable Child Tax Credit, which led to increased resources for families with children,” the report said.

Biden repeatedly has touted this drop in childhood poverty. For instance, his proclamation on Child Health Day on Sept. 30, said: “To give hardworking parents more breathing room during the pandemic, I expanded the child tax credit — a measure estimated to have helped cut child poverty by over 40 percent last year.”

But the expanded credit expired at the end of 2021.

Food Stamps

The number of people in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, has declined, again, since our last update.

As of June, nearly 41 million people — 40,986,375 — were receiving food assistance. That’s about 240,000 fewer people than in April, and it’s a decline of 2.8%, or nearly 1.2 million people, from January 2021 when Biden became president. The figures come from the Department of Agriculture’s latest data.

The SNAP enrollment under Trump was as low as 36.9 million in February 2020. But that changed during the coronavirus pandemic.

Under Biden, enrollment was a bit lower than the June figure at 40.8 million in August and September 2021.

Border Security

The number of apprehensions of people trying to enter the U.S. illegally at the southwest border has stabilized in recent months, but remains near historic highs.

To even out the seasonal changes in border crossings, our measure compares the most recent 12 months on record with the year prior to a president taking office. And for the past 12 months ending in August, the latest figures available, apprehensions totaled 2,183,284, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s 330% higher than during Trump’s last year in office.

As we have noted in past editions of “Biden’s Numbers,” apprehensions were on the rise when Trump left office — and were 14.7% higher in Trump’s last year compared with the year before he took office. But the number of apprehensions jumped dramatically and has remained high since Biden became president.

Since our last report in July, apprehensions stabilized in July and August, when there were 181,765 and 181,160 apprehensions, respectively. That’s about 19% lower than the 224,397 apprehensions in May, which represented a high for the Biden administration and were more than in any single month going back to at least fiscal year 2000. But the July and August numbers are still at about the monthly average for the fiscal year.

A significant demographic shift in the nationality of migrants coming across the border between ports of entry explains some of the dramatic increase in apprehensions. Specifically, there has been a jump in the number of migrants coming this year from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, authoritarian-run countries with which the U.S. has strained diplomatic relations, Ariel Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, explained to us in a phone interview.

In the spring and early summer, there was a dramatic increase in the number of Cuban migrants, including 35,000 in April alone, as many Cubans sought to flee the country’s economic crisis and a crackdown on political dissidents. And when Nicaragua lifted the tourist visa requirement for Cubans in November 2021, it made it easier for Cubans to fly to Nicaragua and then head to the U.S. border via a land route. The number of Cuban migrants declined in the summer months, largely in response to migration management policies implemented after the Summit of the Americas in June, Ruiz Soto said.

But just as the number of Cuban migrants began to decline, there was a sharp increase in the number of Venezuelans coming across the U.S. border, Ruiz Soto said.

More than 80% of Mexican migrants apprehended at the border are simply turned around under Title 42, a public health law invoked in response to the pandemic in March 2020 that allowed border officials to immediately return many of those caught trying to enter the country illegally.

But due to diplomatic tensions, there are barriers to repatriating migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. That also acts as a magnet, Ruiz Soto said, as migrants from those countries know there is little chance they will be returned to their home country, and instead they will be released into the U.S. pending asylum or other immigration hearings. In August, he said, there were more apprehensions of migrants from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua than from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — bucking the traditional flow of immigration to the U.S.

On Sept. 20, Biden referenced this shift when he said the border challenge is now, “a totally different circumstance. What’s on my watch now is Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. And the ability to send them back to those states is not rational.”

The higher number of apprehensions at the border doesn’t necessarily reflect a lack of order or control at the border — or an “open border” as some Republicans put it — but rather is a function of migrants adapting to regulations and U.S. policy, Ruiz Soto said. Many of those from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela don’t really even try to evade authorities, and in many cases seek them out once they have crossed the border, Ruiz Soto said, because they know they are likely to be processed and then released in the country pending an immigration hearing.

For Mexicans, Ruiz Soto said, the Title 42 policy has had another unintended consequence: It has encouraged migrants to make multiple attempts to cross the border, because if caught they are simply returned to Mexico without any further repercussions. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the recidivism rate — meaning the share of people caught crossing more than once in a fiscal year — was 27% in fiscal year 2021, far higher than in pre-Title 42 years. (The recidivism rate was 7% in fiscal year 2019.)

Although the Biden administration sought to terminate Title 42, a federal judge in May blocked that, and the policy has remained in place pending appeals. Should Title 42 go away, Ruiz Soto said the number of migrants attempting to illegally cross the border is likely to increase “but not as much as people think” because under previous policy, migrants caught attempting to cross illegally could face having a formal removal order placed on their record, or criminal prosecution.

Corporate Profits

As inflation rises, corporate profits keep setting records. 

After-tax corporate profits reached a record high of $2.75 trillion last year — and they topped that mark in both the first and second quarters of this year at annual rates, according to the BEA. (See line 45.)

The 2021 profits were 30% higher than the full-year figure for 2020, as estimated by the BEA. 

The BEA’s estimate for the second quarter shows after-tax profits running at an annual rate of more than $3 trillion — a 44% increase over the full-year 2020 figure.

Stock Markets

Stock market gains that were made in Biden’s first year have been wiped out in 2022. 

Under the past two presidents, the stock markets went steadily up. The S&P 500 index rose 166% over the eight years Obama was in office, and it climbed another 67.8% during Trump’s four years. 

But since Biden took office, the S&P 500 is down 3.4% at the close of the market on Oct. 13. For the year, it’s down 23%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is made up of 30 large corporations, is down 2.9% since Biden took office. For the year, the Dow dropped 17.3%.

The Dow rallied on Oct. 13 to close more than 800 points higher and finish above 30,000. It dropped below 30,000 on June 16 for the first time since Jan. 4, 2021, and has been struggling to stay above that line this fall. 

The NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies, including many in the technology sector, has been hit the hardest — saddled by tech stocks that have been performing particularly poorly. The NASDAQ is down 19.3% since Biden took office and a staggering 31.9% so far this year. 

High yields on U.S. Treasury notes and a strong U.S. dollar have hurt big tech, Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Cresset Capital, told CNBC in September. “This is a one-two punch on tech,” Ablin said. “The strong dollar doesn’t help tech. High 10-year Treasury yields don’t help tech.”

Back on July 19, 2021, Biden deflected questions about inflation and boasted about a strong stock market, telling reporters “the stock market is higher than it has been in all of history.” 

Last month, the president reminded reporters that “the stock market doesn’t necessarily reflect the state of the economy, as you well know.” 

“And the economy is still strong,” Biden added. “Unemployment is low. Jobs are up. Manufacturing is good. So I think it’s — I think we’re going to be fine.”

Consumer Sentiment

Inflation has taken its toll on consumer confidence in the economy under Biden. 

The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers reported that its monthly Index of Consumer Sentiment for September was 58.6. That’s slightly better than our last report – when the index dropped to a low of 50 in June. But it’s still 20.4 points lower than it was when Biden took office in January 2021. 

Joanne W. Hsu, director and chief economist of the Surveys of Consumers, attributed the decline to concerns about inflation, which she said extend to all income levels. 

The “sentiment for consumers across the income distribution has declined in a remarkably close fashion for the last 6 months, reflecting shared concerns over the impact of inflation, even among higher-income consumers who have historically generated the lion’s share of spending,” Hsu said in a statement on the final survey results for September. 

Home Prices & Homeownership

Home Prices — With interest rates continuing to climb, the red-hot housing market has begun to cool off. 

The median price of an existing, single-family home sold was $396,300 in August — down from a record high of $420,900 in June, according to the National Association of Realtors. It was the second straight month that the median home price fell. 

“The housing sector is the most sensitive to and experiences the most immediate impacts from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy changes,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a Sept. 21 press release. 

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.66% as of Oct. 6 – more than double the 2.99% rate a year ago, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. 

Nevertheless, home prices are up 29% since Biden took office in January 2021, when the median price of an existing, single-family home sold was $308,000.

Homeownership — High home prices and low inventory – and now higher interest rates – have kept homeownership rates virtually unchanged under Biden.

The homeownership rate, which the Census Bureau measures as the percentage of occupied housing units that are owner-occupied, was 65.8% in the second quarter of 2022 — identical to the rate during Trump’s last quarter in office. (Usual word of caution: The bureau warns against making comparisons with the fourth quarter of 2020, because of pandemic-related restrictions on in-person data collection.) 

The rate peaked under Trump in the second quarter of 2020 at 67.9%. The highest homeownership rate on record was 69.2% in 2004, when George W. Bush was president.

Refugees

Biden continues to fall way short of his campaign promise to accept up to 125,000 refugees into the United States each year.

On Sept. 27, the Biden administration set the cap on refugee admissions for fiscal year 2023 at 125,000 – just as it did in fiscal year 2022.

But in fiscal year 2022, the administration accepted only 25,465 refugees, according to the State Department. 

Overall, the U.S. has admitted 35,473 refugees in Biden’s first full 20 months in office, or 1,774 per month, the data show. That’s nearly 4% less than the 1,845 monthly average during Trump’s four years. (For both presidents, our monthly averages include only full months in office, excluding the month of January 2017 and January 2021, when administrations overlapped.)

In setting the admissions cap at 125,000 for fiscal year 2022, the State Department all but acknowledged it would fall short of that goal, telling Congress that the COVID-19 pandemic “will undoubtedly impact” the administration’s ability “to process large numbers of refugees safely” in fiscal year 2022. The department also said that it needed to rebuild its staff after four years of cuts by the Trump administration.

This year, in its report to Congress for fiscal year 2023, the State Department said “we are beginning to make progress towards fulfilling President Biden’s ambitious admissions target.”

That progress was evident in September, when the U.S. admitted more than 5,500 refugees — the highest monthly amount since January 2017. But the Biden administration would need to average nearly twice that amount in order to meet the president’s goal of admitting 125,000 refugees in fiscal year 2023.  

Guns

Handgun production — In 2021, annual production of pistols and revolvers in the U.S. totaled just over 7.9 million, according to preliminary figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released on July 18.

That represented an increase of about 21.7% from 2020, when handgun production during the beginning of the pandemic surged to a then-record of over 6.5 million.

Prior to 2020, handgun production had gone down by more than a third under Trump through 2019. That was after production more than tripled during President Barack Obama’s time in office.

Gun sales — Gun purchases slid again during the third quarter of 2022, according to the most recent estimates from the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Since the federal government doesn’t collect data on gun sales, the NSSF, a gun industry trade group, estimates gun sales by tracking the number of background checks for firearm sales based on the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. The NSSF-adjusted figures exclude background checks unrelated to sales, such as those required for concealed-carry permits.

The group reported that the NSSF-adjusted NICS total for background checks during the third quarter was 3.76 million, which is a decrease of 5.2% from the 3.97 million in the third quarter of 2021. Also, it’s down more than 33% from the 5.63 million during Trump’s final full quarter as president.

Through the first nine months of 2022, there were 11.89 million background checks for firearm sales. That was roughly 27% less than the 16.24 million in the last nine months of 2020, which was a record year for sales, according to NSSF estimates.

Judiciary Appointments

Supreme Court — Biden has won confirmation for one Supreme Court nominee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. At the same point in his term, Trump had won confirmation for two: Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Jackson replaced retired Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who was appointed by then-President Bill Clinton and served nearly three decades. 

Court of Appeals — Twenty-five U.S. Court of Appeals judges have been confirmed under Biden. At the same point in Trump’s presidency, 29 had been confirmed.

District Court — Biden has won confirmation for 58 District Court judges. For Trump, at the same time in his term, 53 nominees had been confirmed.

Two U.S. Court of Federal Claims judges also have been confirmed under Biden.

There were 87 federal court vacancies, with 44 nominees pending, as of Oct. 13.

Oil Production and Imports

U.S. crude oil production averaged roughly 11.54 million barrels per day during Biden’s most recent 12 months in office (ending in July), according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data published in late September. That was over 1.9% higher than the average daily amount of crude oil produced in 2020.

In its Short-Term Energy Outlook for October, the EIA projected that crude oil production would average 11.7 million barrels per day in 2022, which would be more than every year but 2019.

U.S. crude oil imports in Biden’s last 12 months averaged more than 6.3 million barrels per day — up more than 7.4% from imports in 2020.

Carbon Emissions

U.S. carbon emissions increased slightly since our last quarterly update.

In the most recent 12 months on record (ending in June), there were almost 4.95 billion metric tons of emissions from the consumption of coal, natural gas and various petroleum products, according to the EIA’s latest estimates. That’s up over 8% from the almost 4.58 billion metric tons that were emitted in 2020 — but still lower than the almost 5.15 billion metric tons emitted in 2019.

The EIA has said the increase, which began in 2021, “followed a rise in economic activity and energy consumption once the initial economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic began to subside.”

The EIA currently projects that energy-related CO2 emissions will increase by 1.5% this year and then “decrease 2.3% in 2023 to just under 2021 levels.”

Debts and Deficits

Debt — Since our last update in July, the public debt, which excludes money the government owes itself, increased by more than $395 billion to $24.28 trillion, as of Oct. 12. That total is about 12.2% higher than the debt of nearly $21.64 billion when Biden took office.

Deficits — Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal deficit declined to $1.4 trillion in fiscal year 2022 — down about 50% from $2.8 trillion in fiscal year 2021 and about 55% less than the $3.1 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2020. (The Treasury Department is expected to release the official deficit figure for FY 22 later this month.)

As we wrote earlier this year, most of the reduction in deficits is the result of expiring emergency pandemic spending — not actions taken by Biden, as he has suggested at times. Before any of Biden’s fiscal policies were enacted, CBO projected that, under existing law at the time, the federal budget deficit would be almost $2.3 trillion in 2021 and about $1.1 trillion in 2022.

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The post Biden’s Numbers, October 2022 Update appeared first on FactCheck.org.

A TV ad from a gun control advocacy group claims Republican Sen. Ron Johnson voted “against funding for the police, preventing local departments from hiring more officers.” But the two votes cited were against trillion-dollar spending bills that included a host of measures, well beyond law enforcement funding.

The ad leaves the misleading impression that Johnson simply opposed providing money for local police departments, but these pieces of legislation were much more complicated than that, giving lawmakers many reasons they may have supported or opposed them.

Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund, a super PAC, launched the TV spot on Sept. 23 as part of a $1 million media buy in Wisconsin for the midterms.

Johnson and Republican groups have repeatedly attacked his Democratic opponent, state Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, over the issue of police funding and crime. We’ve written about those misleading claims already.

Now, Everytown is turning the tables, claiming that Johnson “abandoned law enforcement, voting against funding for the police, preventing local departments from hiring more officers.”

It’s worth noting that this battle over who supports police more (or less) would be more apt in state or local government campaigns. In 2019, 87% of police funding came from local governments, according to the Urban Institute. “Nearly all state and local spending on police, corrections, and courts was funded by state and local governments because federal grants account for a very small share of these expenditures,” the think tank’s report said, noting that the figures didn’t include spending on federal policing, such as for federal prisons.

The TV ad cites two votes by Johnson: against the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in 2021 and against the $1.3 trillion consolidated appropriations bill to fund the government in 2018.

We’ll start with the ARP.

American Rescue Plan

The American Rescue Plan is a COVID-19 relief law that passed without any Republican support. It was signed into law by President Joe Biden in March 2021.

The ARP included $1,400 checks to most Americans; expanded unemployment benefits; and money for schools, small businesses and states. More than $350 billion was dedicated to state, county, city and tribal governments to use largely as they wished to aid in the economic recovery from the pandemic and public health measures.

Biden encouraged states and localities to use the money to support essential workers, including police. But there was no requirement in the legislation to spend money on law enforcement.

On March 6, 2021, after the Senate narrowly passed the bill, Biden said that state and local governments would now “have the resources they need available to them” to rehire “laid-off police officers, firefighters, teachers and nurses.” National police organizations also said they had worked to make sure the law included that aid to states and localities.

The administration has boasted that some of the funding was indeed used to hire police and support law enforcement. A May 13 White House fact sheet touted the millions of dollars in Houston dedicated to police overtime, and mental health and domestic violence efforts, among other initiatives; millions spent in Kansas City, including on hiring 150 police officers; and several other examples of cities using ARP money to invest in police equipment, recruitment and community safety programs. It also said Wisconsin had dedicated $100 million in anti-violence efforts across the state.

So the law did provide funding for police. But the nearly $2 trillion legislation provided funding for a lot more than that, and many Republicans said they opposed it because of the total cost, questioning the need for the spending after other COVID-19 relief legislation was enacted in 2020.

We previously wrote about the misleading claim that congressional Republicans “defunded the police” in voting against the ARP. In that story, we noted that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki didn’t identify a single Republican who opposed the bill because of funding for police, when she was pressed on the matter in a June 2021 press briefing.

Johnson, on the day of the Senate vote on the legislation, released a statement saying that he opposed it because it would increase the debt and was “unneeded” for COVID-19 relief.

“This is not Covid relief — it is a massive debt burden that further mortgages our children’s future. I support helping people truly affected by the pandemic, but we should have targeted the unspent $1 trillion from previous bills first,” Johnson said. “The economy is already in a strong recovery, and this bill could spark harmful inflation. It was unneeded and unwise.”

As we’ve written, economists have credited the ARP with boosting the economy. But many also have said in retrospect, the law was too big and did contribute to, but didn’t “spark,” higher inflation, which was largely due to pandemic-related factors and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

When we asked Everytown about the ad, a spokesperson highlighted a question anchor Chris Wallace posed to a Republican lawmaker on “Fox News Sunday” on June 27, 2021. Wallace was interviewing Rep. Jim Banks, who blamed an increase in crime on Democrats, saying they supported “defunding the police.” Wallace responded that he wanted to “push back on that a little bit,” citing the ARP and Biden’s comments that the bill included funding for police.

Wallace asked: “Congressman Banks, you voted against that package, against that $350 billion, just like every other Republican in the House and Senate, so can’t you make the argument that it’s you and the Republicans who are defunding the police?”

But as we wrote previously, about a presidential adviser’s comments on the same show, this wasn’t a vote to cut federal funding for police, as the “defund” phrasing might suggest.

Nor was it simply a vote on police funding.

Consolidated Appropriations Act

The second vote cited in the Everytown ad is Johnson’s vote against a $1.3 trillion consolidated, or omnibus, appropriations act that narrowly averted a government shutdown in late March 2018. Everytown notes that bill, signed into law by then-President Donald Trump, included $2.4 billion for state and local law enforcement programs. But, again, it included funding for many other government programs — in fact, it funded the government for the rest of the fiscal year, through Sept. 30.

The 65-32 vote in the Senate was also bipartisan, with eight Democrats and one Independent voting against it.

We asked Everytown if that meant Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, among a few other Democrats who opposed the bill, also voted “against funding for the police,” but we didn’t get a response.

Democrats had hoped to include a measure to protect so-called Dreamers, those who were brought to the United States illegally when they were children and qualified for deferred deportation proceedings and work authorizations through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The failure to get a DACA fix in the funding bill was one of the reasons Sanders said he voted against it.

“Unfortunately, there are two fundamental failings in this deal that prevented me from voting for it. First, this bill does not address the great moral issue of our time – the fact that 800,000 young Dreamers in the DACA program are in grave danger of losing their legal status and subject to deportation,” Sanders said in a March 23, 2018, statement. “Second, the $165 billion increase in defense spending over two years is much too large. I believe in a strong military, but at a time when the U.S. spends more on defense than the next 12 countries combined, this increase is much too much.”

We couldn’t find a statement from Johnson at the time on his vote, and his campaign did not respond to our questions about this TV ad. But the point is that the motivation to vote against a large appropriations bill could include any number of reasons.

And using the same logic as the support for the ad, it could be argued that Johnson voted for police funding, when he voted for 2019 government funding legislation, which appropriated $304 million for the Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, program, which provides grants to states and localities.

After the Barnes campaign also charged that Johnson had voted against police funding, mainly citing omnibus appropriations laws, Johnson told reporters that he has voted against spending overall because of the nearly $31 trillion of debt, a figure that includes $6.6 trillion in money the government owes to itself.

“I vote against mortgaging our children’s future. And when you vote against a 2,000-page omnibus spending bill that’s probably spending a trillion dollars, there’s going to be good things in there they’re going to spend money on. But somebody has to have the courage to say no, we have to stop this. We’re seeing at least the beginning of a major debt crisis,” Johnson said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The paper noted that “most” of the votes the Barnes campaign pointed to “were omnibus legislation that contained many provisions beyond being related to the police.”

Also among the votes cited by Barnes was one to block consideration of a 2011 bill to provide states and local governments with funding to hire and retain teachers and first responders. The legislation included $4 billion for grants to hire and retain law enforcement officers, and proposed a surtax on those earning more than $1 million to pay for the entire $35 billion act.

Gun Control Votes

The Everytown ad goes on to say Johnson “supported flooding our streets with guns, and making it easier for violent criminals and domestic abusers to get them.” The cited votes were against gun-control measures.

It’s true that Johnson voted against expanding background checks and against prohibiting those convicted of abusing a dating partner from getting guns.

We’ll provide an explanation of the votes.

The ad points to Johnson’s vote against the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which became law on June 25. Fifteen Republicans voted with all Democrats in the Senate to pass it.

The law could keep some guns off the streets. It beefed up background checks for those under age 21, increased penalties for firearms trafficking, required more people who sell guns to register as federally licensed sellers (which means they would then have to run background checks before selling guns), and barred more people convicted of domestic abuse from getting a firearm — hence the ad’s reference to “domestic abusers.”

That provision closes what was called the “boyfriend loophole.” The legislation extends prohibiting gun ownership to those convicted of domestic violence crimes against a dating partner (as opposed to only a co-parent or former/current spouse, as was the case before). But the Safer Communities Act allows those convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense to once again own firearms five years after the conviction.

The ad also cites two Johnson votes on amendments to the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013. He voted against an amendment to expand gun background checks, and for an amendment to institute reciprocity for concealed firearms, meaning that someone permitted to carry a concealed weapon in one state could do so in other states.

There was no final vote on the bill.

Everytown has a point about Johnson’s strong support for gun rights. After all, he has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association and has an “A” rating from the group. But the ad misleads when it cites the senator’s opposition to trillion-dollar spending bills as evidence of “voting against funding for police.”

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

The post Everytown’s Misleading Ad on Johnson’s Votes ‘Against Funding for the Police’ appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

Since President Joe Biden took office:

• The economy regained nearly 9 million jobs, coming within about half a million of the pre-pandemic peak.
• Unemployment fell to 3.6%; unfilled job openings surged, with 1.9 slots for every person seeking work.
• Inflation roared back to the highest level in over 40 years. Consumer prices are up 12.6%. Gasoline alone nearly doubled.
• Wages rose briskly, by 7.7%. But after adjusting for inflation, “real” weekly earnings went down 5.3%.
• The economy contracted at an estimated annual rate of 1.6% during the first three months of this year, after rising 5.7% in 2021.
• Corporate profits reached another record high of $2.62 trillion last year, and they’re running a bit higher in 2022.
• Consumer confidence in the economy reached the lowest point on record.
• Apprehensions of those trying to enter the country illegally through the southwest border are up 336% for the past 12 months, compared with President Donald Trump’s last year in office.
• In President Joe Biden’s first full 17 months in office, the U.S. has admitted 25,108 refugees, still far below his goal of 125,000 a year.
• The federal deficit has declined, but the public debt has still increased by 10.4%.
• The U.S. trade deficit grew by over 49% and is on pace for a new annual high.
• The number of Americans without health insurance decreased slightly, by 1.6 million people from 2020 to 2021.
• Crude oil production and imports have increased — up 1.1% and 6.8%, respectively.
• Gun sales, as estimated by using background checks, have declined by more than 30%.
• The NASDAQ composite index is down, while the S&P 500 index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have registered only small gains.
• The number of people receiving food benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is down 2.2%.

Analysis

This is our second quarterly update of “Biden’s Numbers,” the continuation of a regular feature we began in 2012 on statistical measures of the country’s economic and social well-being under the occupant of the White House.

As we’ve said many times, we don’t assign blame or credit to the president for these figures; opinions will differ on that. We also don’t yet have data on some topics for 2021, Biden’s first year in office. Later this year, we should have Census Bureau figures on poverty and household income, an FBI report on nationwide crime, and gun manufacturing data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Jobs and Unemployment

The number of people with jobs has increased dramatically since Biden took office, but total employment hasn’t quite returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Employment — The U.S. economy added 8,963,000 jobs between Biden’s inauguration and June, the latest month for which data is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But there were still 524,000 fewer people working in June than there were in February 2020, the peak of total employment before COVID-19 forced mass shutdowns and layoffs.

When the June figures were released, Biden boasted that the private sector had recovered. “We have more Americans working today in the private sector … than any time in American history,” he said. And it’s true that private sector employment now exceeds the pre-pandemic peak by 140,000 jobs. But government employment is still 664,000 jobs short of recovery. Almost half that shortfall — 334,000 — is among public school teachers and other local education workers. 

Unemployment — The unemployment rate fell from 6.4% at the time Biden took office to 3.6% during March, April, May and June — a decline of 2.8 percentage points. Biden correctly noted that the current rate is “near a historic low.”

Since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records, the jobless rate has been at or below 3.6% for only 69 months, or 7.7% of the time. Nine of those months were during the Trump years, when the rate hit a low of 3.5% in February 2020, just before the pandemic. That was the lowest since the 1960s. The lowest on record was 2.5% in May and June 1953.

Job Openings — The number of unfilled job openings soared to a record of nearly 11.9 million as of the last business day of March, the highest in the 21 years the BLS has tracked the measure.

The number had slipped down to just under 11.3 million on the last business day of May, the most recent month on record. But even that is an increase of just over 4 million openings, or nearly 56%, during Biden’s time.

So many openings, in fact, that in May there was an average of nearly 1.9 jobs for every job seeker.

(June data on openings will be released on Aug. 2.)

Labor Force Participation — One reason many job openings go unfilled is that millions of Americans left the workforce during the pandemic and haven’t returned. The labor force participation rate (the percentage of the total population over age 16 that is either employed or actively seeking work) has inched up slightly during Biden’s time, from 61.4% in January 2021 to 62.2% in June.

But that’s an increase of only 0.8 percentage points, and still well below the pre-pandemic rate of 63.4% for February 2020. And even that increase is likely temporary.

The rate peaked at 67.3% in the first four months of 2000, but has since been in decline. It went down under both Republican and Democratic presidents — by 1.5 percentage points under President George W. Bush, by another 2.9 points under Barack Obama and by a further 1.4 points under Donald Trump.

In its 10-year economic projection, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted — both before and after Biden took office — that the rate will continue to decline over the next decade.

Manufacturing Jobs — During the presidential campaign, Biden promised he had a plan to create a million new manufacturing jobs — and whether it’s his doing or not, the number is rising briskly.

As of June, the U.S. added 613,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden’s time, a 5% increase in the space of 17 months, according to BLS. Furthermore, the June total is 12,000 above the number of manufacturing jobs in February 2020, before the pandemic forced plant closures and layoffs.

During Trump’s four years, the economy lost 182,000 manufacturing jobs, or 1.4%, largely due to the pandemic. The number recovered steadily during Trump’s last eight months, and has continued to rise under Biden.

Wages and Inflation

CPI — Inflation came roaring back under Biden — with prices rising faster than they have in over 40 years.

During his first 17 months in office, the Consumer Price Index rose 12.6%.

It’s the worst inflation in decades. The most recent 12 months on record, ending in June, saw a 9.1% increase in the CPI (before seasonal adjustment), which the Bureau of Labor Statistics said was the biggest such increase since the 12 months ending in November 1981.

Inflation had been relatively dormant for years before Biden. The CPI rose an average of only 1.9% each year of the Trump presidency (measured as the 12-month change ending each January), 1.8% during President Barack Obama’s eight years and 2.4% during George W. Bush’s two terms.

The current inflation is hitting especially hard where people experience it most regularly — at the gas pump and at the grocery store. In the most recent 12 months, gasoline prices increased 59.9% and food at home increased 12.2%, the BLS said.

Gasoline Prices — The psychological effect of inflation is magnified by that huge spike in gasoline prices, which are advertised in foot-high numbers on street corners everywhere.

The rise was shocking. The national average price of regular gasoline at the pump soared to a brief peak of just over $5 a gallon for the week ending June 13 — the highest weekly price ever recorded by the Energy Information Administration.

Since then the price has been drifting down, but was still $4.49 per gallon during the week ending July 18, the most recent week on record. That’s an increase of 88.7% since the week before Biden took office. The level is still well above the old pre-Biden record, which was $4.11 for two weeks in July 2008, during George W. Bush’s last year in office.

Biden blames “Putin’s price hike” for this pain at the pump, but the fact is gasoline prices already had gone up 48% under Biden as of the week before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Prices actually began rising before Biden’s inauguration. Experts have told us the primary cause of higher gas prices is a global supply and demand issue brought about by the world’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia’s invasion.

Relief may come, gradually. “We forecast gasoline prices will average $4.05/gal in 2022 and $3.57/gal in 2023” the EIA said in its most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook this month. 

Wages — Wages also have gone up under Biden, but not as fast as prices.

Average weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers went up over 7.7% during Biden’s first 17 months in office, according to monthly figures compiled by the BLS. Those production and nonsupervisory workers make up 81% of all employees in the private sector.

But inflation ate up all that gain and more. What are called “real” earnings, adjusted for inflation and measured in dollars valued at their average level in 1982-84, actually declined 5.3% during that time.

And as of June, real earnings for rank-and-file workers have fallen to below where they were in February 2020, before the pandemic.

Economic Growth

Biden’s economic fortunes took a turn for the worse in the first quarter of 2022. 

The economy contracted at an estimated annual rate of 1.6% during the first three months of this year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That figure – the most recent estimate for first-quarter growth in the nation’s real gross domestic product – accounts for the high rate of inflation.

The economic contraction follows a 5.7% increase in Biden’s first year – a bounce-back year after the pandemic-battered economy shrank by 3.4% in 2020. 

Economists weren’t expecting last year’s level of growth to continue. But the decline in real GDP in the first quarter caught some by surprise. Now, many economists are warning of a recession.

According to a survey by the Financial Times and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, nearly 70% of 49 economists surveyed believe there will be a recession next year. 

The first official estimate for the second quarter of 2022 won’t be released until July 28. However, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s “GDP Now” estimated on July 19 that the economy will decline by 1.6% in the second quarter.

Corporate Profits

After-tax corporate profits reached a record high of $2.62 trillion last year — and they are running slightly higher so far this year. 

The 2021 profits were 37.3% higher than the full-year figure for 2020, as estimated by the BEA (see line 45). 

The BEA’s most recent estimate, covering the first three months of 2022, shows after-tax profits running at an annual rate of nearly $2.73 trillion — an increase of nearly 43% over the full-year 2020 figure.

Consumer Sentiment

After rising early in Biden’s presidency, consumer confidence in the economy reached the lowest point on record. 

Shortly after Biden assumed the presidency, the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers reported that its monthly Index of Consumer Sentiment rose from 79 in January 2021 to 88.3 in April 2021, as COVID-19 vaccines became more available and economic conditions improved. 

But last April’s index was a high point for Biden, as rising inflation has eroded consumer confidence in the economy.

The monthly index was a record-low 50 in June — 29 points lower than it was when Biden took office. The preliminary results for July showed the Index of Consumer Sentiment was relatively unchanged at 51.1. (The final July index will be released July 29.)

“The share of consumers blaming inflation for eroding their living standards continued its rise to 49%, matching the all-time high reached during the Great Recession,” Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu said in a release announcing the preliminary results for July. “These negative views endured in the face of the recent moderation in gas prices at the pump.”

Home Prices & Homeownership

Home Prices — Home prices continue to climb under Biden.

The most recent figures from the National Association of Realtors show the median price of an existing, single-family home sold in June was $423,300 — up 37.4% from January 2021. 

The median existing-home price for all housing types — not just single-family houses — was a record-high $416,000, up 13.4% from a year ago ($366,900). “This marks 124 consecutive months of year-over-year increases, the longest-running streak on record,” NAR said in a July 20 press release.

Home prices in Biden’s first year set new records, because of low interest rates, a lack of adequate inventory and other factors. That trend has continued in the first half of this year, although the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes are expected to slow housing prices. 

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.51% as of July 14, nearly double the rate a year ago, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. 

“We will see house price growth to level off here, and we’ll see some price declines in some of the more juiced up markets across the country. And in my mind, that’s a correction when house prices start to go lower,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, told CBS News.

Homeownership — With housing prices high and inventory low, the homeownership rate has barely budged under Biden.

The homeownership rate, which the Census Bureau measures as the percentage of occupied housing units that are owner-occupied, was 65.4% in the first quarter of 2022 — 0.2 percentage points lower than a year ago and 0.4 percentage points lower than the 65.8% rate during Trump’s last quarter in office. (Word of caution: The bureau warns against making comparisons with the fourth quarter of 2020, because of pandemic-related restrictions on in-person data collection.) 

The rate peaked under Trump in the second quarter of 2020 at 67.9%, before the economic effects of the pandemic drove down homeownership rates. 

The highest homeownership rate on record was 69.2% in 2004, when George W. Bush was president. 

Immigration

The number of apprehensions of people trying to enter the U.S. illegally at the southwest border continues to soar under Biden.

To even out the seasonal changes in border crossings, our measure compares the most recent 12 months on record with the year prior to a president taking office. And for the past 12 months ending in June, apprehensions totaled 2,216,791, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s 336% higher than during Trump’s last year in office.

As we have noted in past roundups of Biden’s numbers, apprehensions were on the rise when Trump left office — and were 14.7% higher in Trump’s last year compared with the year before he took office. But the number of apprehensions has jumped dramatically since Biden became president.

And since our last quarterly Biden report, apprehensions have continued to rise steeply. In May, there were 224,220 apprehensions — representing a new high for the Biden administration and more than any single month going back to at least fiscal year 2000. 

Most of the recent increase in attempted illegal border crossings can be attributed to migrants coming from countries not among the traditional feeder countries of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Jessica Bolter, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told us in a phone interview. For example, between February and May, Bolter said, there has been a 98% increase in apprehensions of migrants from Colombia, and a 54% increase in those from Cuba. (Over the same period, apprehensions of migrants from Mexico have risen 4%.) There have also been increases in migrants from Nicaragua, Venezuela and Brazil.

Cuba alone has accounted for 139,000 of the migrants attempting to illegally cross into the U.S. this fiscal year, Bolter said. Cuba has been experiencing the worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, causing massive inflation, she said, and a political crackdown on dissidents has encouraged many to flee the country. And in November 2021, Nicaragua lifted the tourist visa requirement for Cubans. That made it more accessible for Cubans to fly to Nicaragua, and then to head to the U.S. via a land route.

Much of the migration from these countries is driven by the continued economic impact of the pandemic, Bolter said, which has led to high levels of unemployment and food insecurity throughout Latin America. And that is coupled with significant job opportunities in the U.S., which is experiencing a high demand for labor.

Another factor, Bolter said, is that immediate expulsion from Title 42 is significantly lower for people coming from these other countries. Title 42 is a public health law invoked at the southwest border in March 2020 that allowed border officials to immediately turn away many of those caught trying to enter the country illegally. Trump invoked the law because of the coronavirus pandemic.  

Mexico has for the most part refused to accept expelled migrants from countries other than Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, so U.S. immigration authorities can’t just turn around people who have come from other countries. That makes expulsion more resource-intensive for border officials, Bolter said, because they need to arrange flights and travel documents. With resources already stretched thin, she said, border officials simply don’t invoke Title 42 as readily for people from those countries.

So while the Title 42 expulsion rate in fiscal year 2022 is 88% for people coming from Mexico, 67% for people from Guatemala and 64% from Honduras, it is far lower for people from countries such as Cuba (2%), Colombia (4%), Nicaragua (3%) and Venezuela (0.4%). If migrants are not immediately expelled via Title 42, there is “a chance of staying, at least temporarily,” as their cases work through the immigration process, Bolter said, thereby encouraging some people from these countries to attempt migration to the U.S.

Also contributing to the increase in illegal immigration, she said, is that “the Biden administration is perceived as being more lenient toward migrants at the border than the Trump administration was,” which has encouraged more people to attempt to come to the U.S.

On April 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it was terminating its Title 42 order, effective May 23. At the time, the Department of Homeland Security warned that lifting the order could trigger a “significant increase in migration and enforcement encounters.” But in mid-May, before the termination took effect, a federal judge blocked the lifting of the order, and it remains in place.

It’s hard to know, Bolter said, how much impact the Biden administration’s efforts to cease Title 42 had on the migrant surge. There was clearly a rush of Haitian migrants amassing on the Mexican side of the border in anticipation of the lifting of Title 42, she said. (Outside of traditional immigration feeder countries, Haiti has the highest Title 42 expulsion rate — 36% in fiscal year 2022.) When Title 42 was kept in place by a federal judge, many of those Haitian immigrants likely tried to cross into the U.S. anyway, Bolter said.

Refugees

Biden remains far from meeting his goal — first set as a candidate — of accepting 125,000 refugees into the United States each fiscal year.

As president, Biden set the cap at 125,000 for fiscal year 2022, which began Oct. 1, 2021, and ends Sept. 30, 2022. But to accomplish that goal, the U.S. would have to admit on average 10,417 refugees each month. So far, State Department data show that the U.S. in the first nine months of fiscal year 2022 has admitted a total of only 15,100 refugees, or less than 1,700 per month. (Select “Refugee Admissions Report” to view the data.)

In Biden’s first full 17 months in office, the U.S. has admitted 25,108 refugees, or 1,477 per month. That’s nearly 20% less than the 1,843 monthly average during Trump’s four years. (For both presidents, our monthly averages include only full months in office, excluding the month of January 2017 and January 2021, when administrations overlapped.)

In setting the goal at 125,000 for fiscal year 2022, the State Department said “the pandemic globally continues to affect the ability” of the administration “to process large numbers of refugees safely and will undoubtedly impact activity into FY 2022.” The department also said it needed to rebuild its staff after four years of cuts in staffing and resources by the Trump administration.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has forced more than 5.9 million Ukrainians to flee the country for another European country, and more than 3.7 million to register for temporary residence in those countries, as of July 19, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The Biden administration has said it will accept up to 100,000 Ukrainians into the United States by whatever legal means are available, “including the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, parole, and visas.”

From February, when the war began, through June, the U.S. has accepted 763 refugees from Ukraine. That’s nearly three times more than the U.S. accepted during the same five-month period a year ago.

The “normal refugee” process “takes a long time,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an April 6 interview, so the Biden administration is looking at other “legal pathways” to assist Ukrainian refugees.

Debt and Deficits

Debt — As of July 18, the public debt, which does not include money the government owes itself, had increased to almost $23.89 trillion – up from $23.85 trillion on April 11, when we last checked.

Under Biden, the public debt so far has gone up 10.4%. It increased by 50% during Trump’s four years in office.

Deficits — On the other hand, federal borrowing declined during the first nine months of fiscal year 2022 when compared with the same period in fiscal year 2021, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. 

In its monthly budget review for June, CBO said the deficit through the first nine months of the current fiscal year (from October 2021 to June 2022) was $514 billion, or roughly 23% of the $2.24 trillion deficit during the same nine-month period in fiscal year 2021. The cumulative deficit for the first three quarters of fiscal 2022 is also lower than the respective deficits of $747 billion and $2.74 trillion during the same periods in fiscal 2019 and 2020.

The CBO said it now expects the annual deficit for fiscal 2022 to be lower than the $1 trillion it projected in May.

Trade

The international trade deficit grew more than 36% under Trump and has continued to increase under Biden.

The latest BEA figures show that the U.S. imported over $971.5 billion more in goods and services than it exported during the most recent 12 months ending in May. That trade gap was $317.5 billion, or about 49%, higher than in 2020.

Through the first five months of 2022, the U.S. imported a monthly average of $91.2 billion more in goods and services than it exported. That means the country is still on track for an annual trade deficit of more than $1 trillion, which would be the largest one-year trade deficit on record.

Health Insurance

The latest information from the National Health Interview Survey shows that the number of Americans without health insurance dropped, but not significantly, from 2020 to 2021. The estimates, released in early May, are that 30 million people were uninsured at the time they were interviewed in 2021, 1.6 million fewer than the number uninsured in 2020.

In percentage terms, 9.2% of the population was uninsured at the time of the interview in 2021, compared with 9.7% in 2020.

The estimates are early release figures subject to some final editing and weighting.

The Census Bureau collects the data for the NHIS, but the bureau also releases an annual report on the number of people who were uninsured for the entire year (as opposed to those without health insurance at the time they were interviewed). The report for 2021 should be released in September.

The latest NHIS report also found that the percentage of nonelderly Americans with insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges went up under Biden: from 3.8% in 2020 to 4.3% in 2021.

Oil Production and Imports

U.S. crude oil production averaged roughly 11.41 million barrels per day during Biden’s most recent 12 months in office (ending in April), according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data published this month. That was 1.1% higher than the average daily amount of crude oil produced in 2020.

Over the first four months of 2022, the EIA estimates crude oil production averaged 11.5 million barrels per day — about 6.4% more than the average for the first four months of 2021. In its Short-Term Energy Outlook for June, the EIA projected that crude oil production would average 11.9 million barrels per day in 2022, which would be the highest annual average of any year except 2019.

However, U.S. crude oil imports in Biden’s last 12 months increased to an average of nearly 6.3 million barrels per day — up more than 6.8% from imports in 2020. The EIA currently forecasts that the U.S. will import about 3.1 million barrels per day more than it exports in 2022.

Carbon Emissions

In the most recent 12 months on record, there were more than 4.93 billion metric tons of emissions from the consumption of coal, natural gas and various petroleum products, according to the EIA’s latest estimates. That’s up over 7.7% from the almost 4.58 billion metric tons that were emitted in 2020, but still below the pre-pandemic total of about 5.15 billion metric tons emitted in 2019.

The EIA has said the increase “followed a rise in economic activity and energy consumption once the initial economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic began to subside.”

As of July, the EIA projects that energy-related CO2 emissions will increase by 1.5% this year. Natural gas and petroleum-related emissions are expected to increase in 2022 by 3.6% and 2.4%, respectively, while emissions from coal are projected to fall by 3.9%.

Crime

There are limited crime data for Biden’s time in office. The Major Cities Chiefs Association, which collects statistics from law enforcement agencies in big cities, reported that the number of homicides in the first quarter of 2022 in 68 agencies was slightly lower than the number in the first quarter of 2021. There were 1,977 homicides in the first quarter of this year, down 3% from a year prior.

Those quarterly numbers show rapes also declined, by 3.7%, while robberies and aggravated assaults increased by 10.6% and 3.2%, respectively.

The homicide figures are only for part of the year, but they show a reversal from the association’s recent reports. Homicides went up 6.2%, comparing all of 2020 to 2021, based on data from 70 law enforcement agencies, and before Biden had taken office, homicides climbed 32.7% from 2019 to 2020, according to figures from 66 agencies.

The nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice found similar recent trends. Its latest report shows a 5% increase in the number of homicides from 2020 to 2021 in 22 U.S. cities, but there was an even larger increase the year before. Over the two-year span, from 2019 to 2021, homicides went up 44%, “representing 1,298 additional lives lost.” The report noted the “homicide rate remains well below historical highs” in the early 1990s. The lead author of the council’s report, Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told us homicides for these cities are down in the first six months of 2022, compared with the same time period in 2021.

Nationwide crime statistics from the FBI for 2021 aren’t available yet, and once they come out, there will be increased uncertainty around these figures due to a new crime reporting system. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program had been using what was called the Summary Reporting System, but as of Jan. 1, 2021, law enforcement agencies were supposed to have transitioned to the National Incident-Based Reporting System. Many haven’t done so.

The FBI said in March and again in June that too few law enforcement agencies — under 60% — had filed reports to the FBI to allow for preliminary trend data for the entire population in its more limited quarterly reports.

Rosenfeld told us that for the upcoming 2021 annual report, the FBI will have actual numbers for about two-thirds of jurisdictions, but it will estimate, along with the Bureau of Justice Statistics, crime data for the rest. The actual numbers won’t include what he calls “the big shots” – New York City and Los Angeles – because they haven’t made that transition to the NIBRS. “It leaves us with a high degree of uncertainty over whether crime is going up or down nationwide and in local jurisdictions,” he said, noting that this problem comes at a time of heightened concern over crime. 

The FBI said the NIBRS would be an improvement, because it includes more information on the “circumstances and context” of crimes, such as the date and time, demographic information and more details about victims. It also allows for the reporting of more offenses than the old SRS and for the reporting of multiple offenses during the same incident. The SRS only allowed agencies to record the most serious crime in one incident, while the NIBRS can record up to 10 crimes per incident.

That means the new system also will inherently show more crimes. Rosenfeld said if that was the only problem, it could be interpreted properly. “But we’re going to have elevated crime rates for that reason and in addition we’re going to have uncertain crime rates because of all the estimation that will be done,” he said. “The mix is going to generate a great deal of concern, uncertainty and quite obviously, I think, debate about what the numbers actually mean.”

We have asked the FBI about this issue and when the 2021 report will be released, and we haven’t received a response.

Gun Sales

Gun purchases declined yet again during the second quarter of 2022, according to estimates from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry trade group. 

Since the federal government doesn’t collect data on gun sales, the NSSF estimates gun sales by tracking the number of background checks for firearm sales based on the FBI’s National Instant Background Check System, or NICS. The NSSF-adjusted figures exclude background checks unrelated to sales, such as those required for concealed-carry permits.

The group reported that the NSSF-adjusted NICS total for background checks during the second quarter of the year was 3.92 million, which is about 9% less than the 4.3 million in the second quarter of 2021. It’s also more than 30% lower than the 5.63 million in Trump’s last full quarter in office.

Overall, there were 8.12 million background checks for firearm sales in the first six months of 2022. That was roughly 25% less than the 10.8 million in the last six months of 2020.

Stock Markets

A rough 2022 for the markets threatens to completely wipe out any gains that had been made under Biden.

The stock markets rose steadily under the previous two presidents. The S&P 500 index rose 166% over the eight years Obama was in office, and it climbed another 67.8% during Trump’s four years. But the S&P 500 is up 4.2% over the entirety of Biden’s presidency at the close of the market on July 20. For the year, it’s down 17.1%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is made up of 30 large corporations, is up just 3.1% since Biden took office. For the year, the Dow dropped 12.3%.

The NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies, including many in the technology sector, has been hit the hardest — saddled by tech stocks that have been performing particularly poorly. The NASDAQ is down 9.8% since Biden took office and a staggering 24% so far this year. 

A year ago, Biden dismissed concerns about inflation and pointed to the stock market performance as a sign that the economy was strong.

“There’s nobody suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way — no serious economist,” Biden told reporters on July 19, 2021.

“I mean, look, the stock market is higher than it has been in all of history, even went down this month — even down this month,” Biden added. “Now, I don’t look at the stock market as a means by which to judge the economy like my predecessor did.  But he’d be very — he’d be talking to you every day for the last five months about how the stock market is so high — higher than any time in history, still higher than any time in history.”

But that is not the case anymore.

Judiciary Appointments

Supreme Court — Biden has won confirmation for one Supreme Court nominee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. At the same point in his term, Trump also had won confirmation for one justice.

Court of Appeals — Biden has won confirmation for 17 U.S. Court of Appeals judges, as of July 20, including Jackson, who was an appeals court judge for nearly 10 months before the Senate voted to confirm her to the Supreme Court in April. Trump had won confirmation for 23 at the same point in his presidency. 

District Court — For federal District Courts, 53 of Biden’s nominees have been confirmed. At the same point in Trump’s tenure, 20 nominees had been confirmed.

Two U.S. Court of Federal Claims judges also have been confirmed under Biden.

There were 79 federal court vacancies, with 34 nominees pending, as of July 18.

Food Stamps

Since our last update, almost 109,000 more people came off the rolls for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, according to the Department of Agriculture’s latest data.

As of April, the most recent month for which preliminary figures are available, about 41.23 million people were receiving food assistance. That figure is down 2.2%, or about 945,000, from the nearly 42.2 million who were accessing benefits when Biden took office in January 2021.

Under Trump, there were as few as 36.9 million collecting SNAP benefits in February 2020. But that figure increased to as many as 43 million beneficiaries in June 2020, as more people turned to the program during the height of the pandemic.

Thus far, the highest total under Biden was about 42.3 million in February 2021. The lowest was 40.8 million in August and September.

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The post Biden’s Numbers (Second Quarterly Update) appeared first on FactCheck.org.

In a prime-time speech to the nation, President Joe Biden spoke about gun violence and his proposals to reduce it. Here, we answer common questions about some of the statistics the president cited and actions he proposed.

His remarks on June 2 were made after a spate of mass shootings within the prior three weeks in which 35 people were killed by gunman in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

How many firearm deaths are there in the U.S. per year?

In 2020, there were 45,222 firearm deaths in the United States, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of those — 24,292 — were suicides, while 19,384 deaths were homicides.

The death rates per 100,000 population were 13.7 for all firearm deaths, 7.4 for suicides and 5.9 for homicides. The chart below shows the firearm death rates by type of injury from 1981 to 2020.

Over that time period, the rates were highest at 15.2 firearm deaths per 100,000 population in 1993, 7.6 for suicides in 1990 and 7 for homicides in 1991.

In his remarks, Biden noted that CDC data showed “guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America.” An analysis of the CDC data, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on May 19, determined firearm injuries were the leading cause of death for those ages 1 through 19 in 2020. Dating back to 1999, the data had previously found guns were the second-leading cause of death, behind automobile crashes.

How many mass shootings have occurred in the U.S. over time, and this year alone?

It depends on how one defines “mass shooting.” According to a database compiled by the magazine Mother Jones, there have been at least 129 public mass shootings since 1982, with more than half of those occurring since 2013. This year alone, there have been four: in Sacramento, Buffalo, Uvalde and Tulsa. However, by different criteria, there have been 18 mass shootings this year.

Mother Jones’ database includes attacks in public places, typically by a sole perpetrator, in which three or more victims were killed, and prior to 2013, it included such attacks in which four or more victims were killed — metrics that federal law enforcement have used for mass killings during those time periods. The database focuses on indiscriminate shootings in public places, and it doesn’t include killings mostly linked to gang activity or robberies, or those in private homes.

Including any shooting involving three or more victims killed, regardless of the other circumstances, would increase the number of “mass shootings” considerably. There were 18 such shootings this year alone, according to a database compiled by the Gun Violence Archive. Those incidents include a Jan. 23 shooting in which six people were killed in a house in Milwaukee and a March 12 shooting on the streets of Baltimore that left three men dead.

In his June 2 speech, Biden used a broader definition of mass shooting, saying: “Since Uvalde, just over a week ago, there have been 20 other mass shootings in America, each with four or more people killed or injured, including yesterday at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma.” That’s the criteria used by the Gun Violence Archive — four or more victims shot, whether killed or injured, not including the shooter. So far in 2022, the research organization has found 233 shootings meet that definition, and yes, there have been 20 such shootings since the elementary school massacre in Uvalde.

As for mass school shootings, there have been 19 since 1982, with 197 victims killed, according to Mother Jones’ database.

How do background checks work, and how are Democrats proposing to expand them?

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 requires that all guns obtained from a federally licensed firearms dealer include a background check. When a customer applies to buy a gun from the dealer, the seller has to run that person’s name and other identifying information through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, an electronic system that verifies buyers do not have a reported criminal record or mental health issue that makes them ineligible to purchase or own firearms.

But not all gun sales or transfers go through licensed dealers, and in some states, background checks are not required for such private sales between unlicensed individuals, including some sales on the internet or at gun shows. 

Most congressional Democrats want that to change.

In March 2021, the Democrat-controlled House passed H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, by a vote of 227-203, mostly along partisan lines. Eight Republicans supported it, and one Democrat opposed it.

As we’ve written, the bill seeks to expand the background check requirements to almost all gun transfers, including those between private parties. It would require firearm transfers between private parties to be handled by a federally licensed dealer, who would take possession of the firearm while the background check is being conducted.

There would be exceptions to the policy, such as loans or gifts between family members and temporary transfers to people in situations of self-defense or at a shooting range.

Most congressional Democrats also want to extend the time required to conduct a background check before a gun can be given to a buyer.

Under current law, a federally licensed firearms dealer can transfer a weapon to a purchaser in what is called a “default proceed,” if the background check cannot be completed in three business days.

But in March of last year, 217 House Democrats and two House Republicans voted to pass H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act. That bill would increase the window to conduct a background check to a minimum of 10 business days. If the background check still remains incomplete after 10 days, the purchaser can submit a petition for a final determination. If another 10 days pass without a decision, the firearms can then be transferred to the prospective purchaser.

Only two Democrats voted against the legislation.

However, neither H.R. 8 nor H.R. 1446 has received a vote in the evenly divided Senate, where at least 60 votes are necessary to avoid a potential filibuster of either bill.

What states have red-flag laws?

In his speech, the president called for a “federal red-flag law.”

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia already have so-called red-flag laws in place, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates gun control laws. The states are: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

Also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders, or ERPO, red-flag laws allow certain people — usually just law enforcement officers, family or household members — “to petition a court to order that firearms be temporarily taken or kept away from someone who poses a risk of committing gun violence,” the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in a 2019 report.

“ERPO laws are designed to respond to acute periods of elevated risk of violence by authorizing a temporary ban on new firearm purchases and the temporary removal of firearms currently in an individual’s possession,” the RAND Corporation explains in a 2020 report as part of its Gun Policy in America initiative.

Thirteen of the 19 states and the District of Columbia “allow family or household members as well as law enforcement to submit a petition” for a protection order, according to the Giffords Law Center.

“Five states limit the category of petitioners to law enforcement only,” the center says. “Indiana has a risk-based firearm removal law that is similar to law enforcement-only ERPOs.”

The president suggested he would seek an expansive federal red-flag law.

“We should also have national red-flag laws so that a parent, a teacher, a counselor can flag for a court that a child, a student, a patient is exhibiting violent tendencies, threatening classmates, or experiencing suicidal thoughts that makes them a danger to themselves or to others,” Biden said.

A few states do allow some people other than law enforcement and family or household members to petition for a protection order. For example, “Maryland and DC … allow mental health providers to petition; New York … allows school administrators to petition; and Hawaii … allows medical professionals, coworkers, and educators to petition,” according to the Giffords Law Center.

In an article last year, the Wall Street Journal found that state red-flag laws were used about 5,000 times in 2020 — most often in Florida, where the law was used 2,355 times. Florida passed the law after a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February 2018 that killed 17 people and wounded 17 others.

“Florida’s law authorizes law enforcement agencies to petition a court for a civil order preventing a person from accessing firearms for up to one year,” according to the Giffords Law Center.

In a review of existing studies on the effects of red-flag laws, the RAND Corporation found in its 2020 report that there is “inconclusive evidence for the effect of extreme risk protection orders on total and firearm suicides.”

How many states have ‘safe storage’ laws?

The president said there should be “safe storage laws and personal liability for not locking up your gun,” which he said the House is planning to address.

Generally, safe storage means that gun owners keep their firearms locked in a safe or use a safety device when not being used. The intent is to keep the weapons away from those who are not supposed to possess them, including minors.

There is no federal law that requires gun owners to store guns securely; however, importers, manufacturers and dealers must include a gun storage or safety device with handgun sales or transfers in most cases. There are 13 states that have laws concerning either gun storage or firearm locking devices, according to the Giffords Law Center.

Only two of those states, Massachusetts and Oregon, generally require all firearms to be stored with a lock in place. Four other states (California, Colorado, Connecticut and New York) impose that requirement in certain situations, such as when gun owners reside with someone prohibited from having a gun.

The center says the District of Columbia has a nonbinding policy that strongly encourages registrants to keep their firearms unloaded and either disassembled or secured with a trigger lock or in a safe.

In addition, five states require that locking devices accompany all guns sold by federally licensed dealers, while seven states have that stipulation for dealer sales of certain types of guns. In Ohio, a dealer is only required to offer to sell the purchaser a trigger lock or gun locking device, the center says.

Locking devices may be an external device or a design feature of the firearm.

As for private sales, only three states require that locking devices accompany all guns in such sales. And three other states require that locking devices accompany private sales of either handguns or assault weapons or both.

In five of the states that require some or all guns to be sold with locking devices, the locks must be approved or meet state guidelines.

How many states place restrictions on teens buying rifles, and what are those restrictions?

In his speech, Biden said his first choice would be a ban on assault weapons, but if that can’t be accomplished, “then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21.”

“In Uvalde, the shooter was 17 when he asked his sister to buy him an assault weapon, knowing he’d be denied because he was too young to purchase one himself. She refused,” Biden said. “But as soon as he turned 18, he purchased two assault weapons for himself. Because in Texas, you can be 18 years old and buy an assault weapon even though you can’t buy a pistol in Texas until you’re 21. If we can’t ban assault weapons, as we should, we must at least raise the age to be able to purchase one to 21.”

“Look, I know some folks will say, ’18-year-olds can serve in the military and fire those weapons,’” Biden said. “But that’s with training and supervision by the best-trained experts in the world. Don’t tell me raising the age won’t make a difference. Enough.”

Federal law prohibits licensed gun dealers from selling handguns to people under 21. But for long guns, including assault rifles, licensed dealers can sell to anyone over the age of 18. Federal law places no minimum age restrictions on the possession of long guns.

However, state laws on the issue vary widely.

According to the Giffords Law Center, five states prohibit the purchase of long guns, including assault rifles, for people under the age of 21: California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois and Vermont (without a hunting safety certificate). Washington state prohibits the sale of just assault rifles to people under 21.

Two states, Hawaii and Illinois, also make it illegal for anyone under 21 to possess a long gun. Maryland requires people to be 21 to possess an assault weapon. And Washington state prohibits the possession of semiautomatic rifles by people under the age of 21 when not on private property.

Many of the laws banning sales of rifles to people under 21 are being challenged in court. Last month, a U.S. appeals court ruled that California’s ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to people under 21 is unconstitutional.

“There’s a big fight brewing over these restrictions on guns for 18, 19, and 20-year-olds because the courts are in the midst of a great expansion of Second Amendment gun rights,” Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who writes about gun policy, told NPR.

Looking at studies researching age requirements for any firearms, not just assault weapons, RAND found “inconclusive evidence for how minimum age requirements for possessing a firearm affect total homicides, firearm homicides, and other violent crime.”

We couldn’t find any solid research directly addressing the effect of raising from 18 to 21 the minimum age to purchase an assault rifle. But gun control groups like Giffords point to academic research that shows post-adolescent brains have not fully matured, making young adults more prone to involvement in violence.

After the Parkland school shooting in 2018, then-President Donald Trump expressed support for raising the minimum age to 21 to purchase an assault weapon.

“Now, this is not a popular thing to say, in terms of the NRA. But I’m saying it anyway,” Trump said. I’m going to just have to say it. But you can’t buy — I mean, think of it. You can buy a handgun — you can’t buy one; you have to wait until you’re 21. But you can buy the kind of weapon used in the school shooting at 18. I think it’s something you have to think about.”

Trump suggested he was willing to buck the NRA’s opposition to such a law.

“I can say that the NRA is opposed to it,” Trump said. “And I’m a fan of the NRA. I mean, there’s no bigger fan. I’m a big fan of the NRA. … These are great people. These are great patriots. They love our country. But that doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything. It doesn’t make sense that I have to wait until I’m 21 to get a handgun, but I can get this weapon at 18.”

But he never followed through with backing legislation to accomplish that.

Did the assault weapons ban reduce mass shootings?

As he has in the past, Biden said in his speech to the nation that the assault weapons ban included in a 1994 crime bill that he sponsored reduced mass shootings.

“And in the 10 years it was law, mass shootings went down,” Biden said. “But after Republicans let the law expire in 2004 and those weapons were allowed to be sold again, mass shootings tripled. Those are the facts.”

But the facts about the effectiveness of the law on reducing mass shootings aren’t as clear-cut as he presents them.

We wrote about the effectiveness of the assault weapons ban in 2013 and again in 2021. In both cases, we cited a three-part study authored by Christopher S. Koper and funded by the Department of Justice that concluded in the final report issued in 2004 that the ban’s success in reducing crimes committed with prohibited guns was “mixed.”

“Although the ban has been successful in reducing crimes with AWs [Assault Weapons], any benefits from this reduction are likely to have been outweighed by steady or rising use of non-banned semiautomatics with LCMs [large-capacity magazines], which are used in crime much more frequently than AWs,” Koper wrote. “Therefore, we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”

(For more, read our March 26, 2021, article “FactChecking Biden’s Claim that Assault Weapons Ban Worked.”)

As for whether “mass shootings tripled” since the law expired, we went to a database of mass shootings created and maintained by the magazine Mother Jones. (See the question above on mass shootings for more on the database criteria.)

The assault weapons ban was in effect from September 1994 to September 2004, during which time there were 15 mass shootings that resulted in 96 deaths, according to the Mother Jones database. That’s an average of 1.5 mass shootings per year and 6.4 deaths per mass shooting incident.

Since then, there were 94 mass shootings, from Dec. 8, 2004, to May 24, 2022, that resulted in 776 deaths. That’s an average of roughly five mass shootings per year and 8.3 deaths per shooting.

Biden’s claim that “mass shootings tripled” since the assault weapons ban expired is supported by at least one measure, although the firearms covered by the 1994 law were not responsible for all of these shootings.

What does the research say about effectiveness of banning large-capacity magazines?

Biden also renewed his call for a ban on large-capacity magazines.

The president praised a bill that passed in the House Judiciary Committee on June 2 that calls for outlawing the import, sale, manufacture, transfer or possession of large-capacity magazines. It would grandfather currently owned large-capacity magazines. The bill — which passed in the committee by a vote of 25-19, with all Republicans voting against it — does not call for an outright ban on assault weapons, though it would raise the lawful age to purchase one from 18 to 21.

We looked at the research into bans on large-capacity magazines in our March 26, 2021, story. We found that while the RAND Corporation’s review of gun studies concluded there is “inconclusive evidence for the effect of assault weapon bans on mass shootings,” there is growing evidence that banning large-capacity magazines may reduce the number killed and injured in mass shootings.

Although there is no established definition, large-capacity magazines generally refer to magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds of ammunition, essentially allowing a shooter to fire 10 rounds without having to take the time to reload.

Research published in 2019 in Criminology & Public Policy by Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation for the Minnesota Department of Corrections, found that while the expiration of the assault weapons (and LCM) ban in 2004 did not have much of an effect on the number of mass public shootings, the number killed and injured in mass public shootings has increased over the decade after the ban had expired.

And research published in Criminology & Public Policy in January 2020 concluded that state bans of large-capacity magazines did appear to be “associated with significant reductions in the incident of fatal mass shootings.”

“It’s clear that there is an association between weapon features, most notably ammunition capacity, and how many people are shot in these incidents,” Daniel Webster, one of the authors of the study and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, told us via email at the time. “Shooters select weapons and ammunition feeding devices that will allow them to shoot as many people as possible. It is a separate question whether bans will reduce casualties from mass shootings or how long they need to be in place in order for the effects to be realized.”

In separate research also published in Criminology & Public Policy in January 2020, Koper, principal fellow of George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy and the author of the Department of Justice-funded review of the 1994 assault weapons ban, argued that the “most important provisions of assault weapons law” are restrictions on large-capacity magazines, because “they can produce broader reductions in the overall use of high-capacity semiautomatics that facilitate high-volume gunfire attacks.”

An increase in the use of LCMs “would arguably have not happened, or at least not to the same degree, had Congress extended the ban in 2004,” Koper states. “Considering that mass shootings with high-capacity semiautomatics are considerably more lethal and injurious than other mass shootings, it is reasonable to argue that the federal ban could have prevented some of the recent increase in persons killed and injured in mass shootings had it remained in place.”

Specifically, Koper concluded, “Data on mass shooting incidents suggest these magazine restrictions can potentially reduce mass shooting deaths by 11% to 15% and total victims shot in these incidents by one quarter, likely as upper bounds.”

How many states ban large-capacity ammunition?

The federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 made it unlawful to “transfer or possess a large capacity ammunition feeding device,” but, as we’ve said, that law expired in 2004. Since then, nine states and the District of Columbia have passed laws banning large-capacity magazines: California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Vermont. All of them except Colorado and Vermont also ban assault weapons.

According to a review of state laws on large-capacity magazines by the Giffords Law Center, eight of the nine states prohibit large-capacity ammunition magazines for use with any firearm, while Hawaii’s law only targets large-capacity magazines used with a handgun.

Most states define large-capacity magazines as ones capable of holding more than 10 rounds; in Colorado, it’s more than 15 rounds. And Vermont draws a distinction for long guns (more than 10 rounds) and handguns (more than 15 rounds).

Among the states that ban large-capacity magazines, there are also differences in prohibited activities, such as possession, transfer, manufacture, purchase and importation. The most comprehensive bans — prohibiting possession, manufacture and transfer (including sale) of large-capacity magazines — are in California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and Vermont.

And finally, there are differences between the states regarding whether they exempted magazines owned prior to enactment of the bans — in other words whether they grandfathered existing magazines.

California, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, New Jersey and New York did not grandfather LCMs, meaning that large-capacity magazines owned prior to the bans had to be destroyed, converted to a lower capacity, turned in to law enforcement, or transferred to a dealer or out of state. New York gives an owner 30 days after being notified by law enforcement about the ban to get rid of the banned magazines. Connecticut requires grandfathered magazines to be registered, while Colorado, Massachusetts and Vermont all exempted possession of magazines owned prior to enactment of their bans. Maryland does not prohibit possession of large-capacity magazines, only the manufacture and transfer of them.

What liability protections do gun manufacturers have?

Biden again called for repealing “the liability shield that often protects gun manufacturers from being sued for the death and destruction caused by their weapons.” He added: “They’re the only industry in this country that has that kind of immunity. Imagine — imagine if the tobacco industry had been immune from being sued — where we’d be today.”

It’s a fact that federal law protects gun makers from most civil lawsuits. However, other industries, such as vaccine manufacturers and administrators, also receive certain liability protections, contrary to what Biden said.

As we’ve reported, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act does largely prevent licensed manufacturers, dealers, sellers of firearms or ammunition, and trade associations from being sued for “criminal or unlawful” misuse of a gun or ammunition. But there are six exceptions, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The exceptions include cases in which a firearm seller acted with negligence, cases involving the transfer of a firearm with the knowledge that it would be used to commit a crime, and cases in which manufacturers and sellers marketed or sold a firearm in violation of state or federal law.

In February, families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting agreed to settle their lawsuit against Remington Arms Co. for $73 million. The families sued the company for its marketing of the assault-style rifle that was used in the shooting.

The post Q&A on Biden’s Gun Proposals appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

Here’s how the U.S. has been performing since President Joe Biden assumed office:

• The economy regained 7.9 million jobs, getting within 1.6 million of the peak employment before the pandemic.
• Unemployment fell to 3.6%; unfilled job openings surged, with 1.8 slots for every person seeking work.
• Inflation roared back to the highest level in over 40 years. Consumer prices are up 9.7%. Gasoline alone rose nearly 72%.
• Wages rose briskly, by 6.5%. But after adjusting for inflation, “real” weekly earnings went down 3.8%.
• The economy grew 5.7% last year — the highest rate of growth since 1984.
  
• The monthly average number of migrants apprehended at the border with Mexico over the last year increased by 309% compared with the average during President Donald Trump’s final year.
• The percentage of Americans without health insurance dropped by 1.4 points from the last quarter of Trump’s presidency to the third quarter of Biden’s.
  
• The U.S. admitted 18,766 refugees in Biden’s first 14 full months in office — lagging far behind his goal of 125,000 refugees a year.
• Annual corporate profits increased last year for the first time since 2018, topping $2.6 trillion and setting a new record.
• Homicides in U.S. big cities were up 6.2% from 2020 to 2021.
  
• The U.S. trade deficit grew by more than 34% and is on pace for a new record high.
• Crude oil production has increased by nearly 1%, with larger gains projected for this year.
• Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court. 
• The public debt rose another 10%, although federal deficits are on the decline.
• Stock prices are up since Biden took office, but have fallen since the start of the year.

Analysis

As our regular readers know, we have been tracking the nation’s progress — or lack thereof, in some cases — since October 2012, when we introduced “Obama’s Numbers,” which we updated on a quarterly basis. We did the same for Trump.

This is our first quarterly update of “Biden’s Numbers,” which debuted in January.

Here we include the latest statistics from authoritative sources on the state of the nation’s economic and social well-being. We don’t assign blame or credit, knowing full well that opinions will differ on that.

We should note that some statistics are not available at this time. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has yet to release either an interim or final report on 2021 gun manufacturing data. We also won’t have Census Bureau poverty and household income figures for 2021 until September. We’ll cover those and more in quarterly updates to come.

Jobs and Unemployment

The economy continued to rebound under Biden, regaining millions of jobs lost during the pandemic and driving the unemployment rate down to almost as low as it had been before.

Employment — The U.S. economy added 7,908,000 jobs between January 2021, when Biden took office, and March, the latest month for which data is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Biden boasted when the March numbers were released: That’s “more jobs created over the first 14 months of any presidency in any term ever.” That’s true enough, measured in the sheer number of jobs. In percentage terms, Biden’s 5.5% job growth runs a close second to the 5.9% gain during the first 14 months of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

And employment still hasn’t fully recovered from the pandemic. There were nearly 1.6 million fewer people working in March than there were in February 2020, just before COVID-19 forced much of the economy to shut down.

Unemployment — The unemployment rate plunged during Biden’s first 14 months, down to 3.6% in March from 6.4% when he took office.

“There have been only three months in the last 50 years where the unemployment rate in America is lower than it is now,” Biden said of the most recent report. 

That’s correct, though Biden failed to mention that those three months were during Trump’s presidency. The rate was 3.5% in September 2019 and again in January and February 2020. So even the jobless rate is not quite back to where it was before the pandemic.

Job Openings — Job opportunities surged during Biden’s time — and workers scrambled to take advantage.

The number of unfilled job openings hit a record 11.4 million in December — by far the highest recorded in the 21 years the Labor Department has tracked that figure. And it had edged down only slightly by the last business day of February, the most recent figure available, when it stood at 11.3 million.

That’s an increase of more than 4 million — 56% — since Biden was inaugurated.

As of the end of February, there were 1.8 openings for every unemployed person seeking work. (March data will be released on May 3.)

Meanwhile, record numbers of Americans are quitting their jobs. That number hit 4.5 million in November, the most since the Department of Labor began tracking the statistic two decades ago. It was little changed, at 4.3 million, in February, the most recent figure available. That’s an increase of 31% from where it stood in January 2021, when Biden took office.

Some called it the “great resignation,” and it certainly causes problems for businesses trying to cope with a shortage of workers. But a more fitting name might be the “great upgrade,” as most who quit say they found better jobs elsewhere.

Labor Force Participation — The wealth of job opportunities began drawing sidelined workers back into the workforce. The labor force participation rate climbed to 62.4% in March, up 1 full percentage point from where it was when Biden took office.

That’s still well below the pre-pandemic 63.4% labor force participation rate in February 2020. The rate has been trending downward for years, after peaking at 67.3% for the first four months of 2000, largely due to the aging population.

Manufacturing Jobs — Under Biden, the U.S. has regained 473,000 manufacturing jobs, a 3.9% increase, according to BLS.

That’s still 128,000 shy of the number of manufacturing jobs in February 2020, before the effects of the pandemic kicked in.

As a candidate, Biden promised that his “buy American” plan would result in a million new manufacturing jobs, which he calls the “backbone of America.”

Wages and Inflation

CPI — Inflation came roaring back under Biden. During his first 14 months in office, the Consumer Price Index rose 9.7%.

It’s the worst inflation in more than 40 years. The most recent 12 months on record, ending in March, saw an 8.5% increase in the CPI, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics said was the biggest such increase since the 12 months ending in December 1981.

Inflation had been relatively dormant for years before Biden. The CPI rose an average of only 1.9% each year of the Trump presidency (measured as the 12-month change ending each January), 1.8% during President Barack Obama’s eight years and 2.4% during George W. Bush’s two terms.

The current inflation is hitting especially hard where people experience it most regularly — at the gas pump and at the grocery store. In the most recent 12 months, gasoline prices increased 48% and food at home increased 10%, the BLS said.

Gasoline Prices — The psychological effect of inflation is magnified by that huge spike in gasoline prices. While spending on gasoline makes up just under 4% of what consumers lay out each month, according to the BLS, the prices are advertised in foot-high numbers on street corners everywhere.

Prices have eased a bit since hitting a high of nearly $4.32 per gallon in the second week of March. But as of the week that ended April 11, the national average price of regular gasoline at the pump was still just over $4.09 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s an increase of $1.71 or nearly 72% since the week before Biden took office.

Biden blames “Putin’s price hike” for this pain at the pump, but the fact is gasoline prices already had gone up 48% under Biden as of the week before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Still, experts have told us Biden’s policies aren’t the cause of higher gas prices.

Experts expect gasoline prices will soon ease further. “We expect U.S. prices for retail gasoline will average $3.84 per gallon (gal) this summer (April–September)” the EIA said in its most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook this month. Still, that would be “up from $3.06/gal last summer and the highest price (adjusted for inflation) since the summer of 2014,” EIA said.

Wages — Wages also have gone up under Biden, but not as fast as prices.

Average weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers went up 6.5% during Biden’s first 14 months in office, according to monthly figures compiled by the BLS. Those production and nonsupervisory workers make up 81% of all employees in the private sector.

But inflation ate up all that gain and more. What are called “real” earnings, adjusted for inflation and measured in dollars valued at their average level in 1982-84, actually declined 3.8% during that time.

Nevertheless, rank-and-file workers still have heftier paychecks now than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic forced 22 million out of work. Back in February and March 2020 average real wages soared simply because it was mostly lower-wage workers who were being laid off. And now low-paid workers are quitting and trading up to better-paying jobs at a record clip.

Even at their recent peak, inflation-adjusted earnings remained well below the levels reached in the late 1960s. For a broader historical view, see our June 28, 2019, story “Are Wages Rising or Flat?”

Consumer Confidence

Consumer confidence in the economy, which rose in Biden’s first few months in office, has dropped to a low point in his second year. 

Shortly after Biden assumed the presidency, the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers monthly index rose from 79 in January 2021 to 88.3 in April 2021, as COVID-19 vaccines became more available and COVID-19 cases were on the decline.

But rising inflation has taken its toll on consumer confidence.

The monthly index was 59.4 in March — 19.6 points lower than it was when Biden took office. Richard Curtin, director of the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers, said “inflation has been the primary cause of rising pessimism.”

The March index was the lowest consumer confidence has been since August 2011, when it fell to 55.8.

Home Prices & Homeownership

Home Prices — Home prices have stabilized a bit since our last report, but still remain higher under Biden than Trump.

The most recent figures from the National Association of Realtors show the median price of an existing, single-family home sold in February was $363,800 — up 18% from January 2021. But the percentage increase is about the same from our last report.

Home prices in Biden’s first year set new records, because of low interest rates, a lack of adequate inventory and other factors. The national median price of an existing, single-family home peaked in June 2021 at $370,100. But there are signs that the market is cooling. Inventory and interest rates have increased, while sales have declined, the NAR said in a March 18 press release on February sales.

Homeownership — Under Biden, the homeownership rate still hasn’t recovered from the economic effects of the pandemic.

The homeownership rate, which the Census Bureau measures as the percentage of housing units that are owner-occupied, was 65.5% in the fourth quarter of 2021. That was 0.3 percentage points lower than the 65.8% rate during Trump’s last quarter in office. (Word of caution: The bureau warns against making comparisons with the fourth quarter of 2020, because of pandemic-related restrictions on in-person data collection.) 

The rate peaked under Trump in the second quarter of 2020 at 67.9%, before the economic effects of the pandemic took hold. That means the most recent rate is 2.4 percentage points lower than the pre-pandemic rate. (In the fourth quarter of 2021, the pandemic-related restrictions on data collection were lifted in all areas, the bureau said.)

The highest homeownership rate on record was 69.2% in 2004. 

Corporate Profits

For the first time since 2018, corporations saw their annual profits increase in 2021. Profits topped $2.6 trillion for the year, setting a new record, according to figures released March 30 by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The previous record was $1.98 trillion in 2018. 

The most recent year’s figure is 37.3% higher than the full-year figure for 2020, the year before Biden’s inauguration.

Economic Growth

The economy in Biden’s first year did even better than economists expected — boosted by a stronger than expected fourth quarter. But there are signs of slowing in 2022.

Real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product grew 5.7% last year — the highest rate of growth since 1984, when the economy grew 7.2%.

In our last report, we noted that the median forecast by economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal in January was for GDP growth to come in at 5.2% for 2021. But the official data showed that real GDP grew at an annual rate of 6.9% in the fourth quarter of 2021, up from 2.3% in the third quarter and boosting the full-year growth rate higher than expected.

But the economy isn’t expected to continue at that pace.

The “GDP Now” forecast produced by the Federal Reserve Board of Atlanta projects that the first quarter will come in at 1.1%, based on available economic data so far for the quarter as of April 8. 

For the year, The Conference Board projects that annual growth in the U.S. will be 3% in 2022, explaining in a March 10 release that it downgraded growth expectations in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Of the economists surveyed in April by the Wall Street Journal for its quarterly economic forecast, the average prediction was 2.6% growth for this year.

Border Security

A key measurement of illegal immigration, apprehensions at the southwest border, has risen dramatically under Biden.

To even out that seasonal changes in border crossings, our measure compares the most recent 12 months on record with the year prior to a president taking office. And for the past 12 months ending in February (the most recent for which figures are available), apprehensions totaled 2,079,543. That’s a whopping 309% higher than the total during Trump’s last year in office.

Although apprehensions were on the rise when Trump left office — and were 14.7% higher in Trump’s last year compared with the year before he took office — apprehensions jumped dramatically after Biden became president. They more than doubled in Biden’s first few months in office and rose to a peak of just over 200,000 in July (a monthly figure that hadn’t been seen since 2000). The monthly numbers have come down some since then, but remain historically high.

As we wrote in January, some of the higher numbers under Biden (as well as for Trump in his last year) are inflated due to higher recidivism rates — meaning the share of people caught crossing more than once. Recidivism rates have increased since the Trump administration enacted (and the Biden administration continued) an order under Title 42, a public health law invoked at the southwest border in March 2020 that allowed border officials to immediately turn away many of those caught trying to enter the country illegally. Trump invoked the law because of the coronavirus pandemic.  

Jessica Bolter, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told us some of the surge at the border after Biden took office was the result of “the perception that President Biden would treat immigrants more leniently,” which encouraged more people to attempt to come to the U.S. But there have been other issues beyond Biden’s control contributing to the trend, Bolter said, including devastating hurricanes in November 2020 in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala that drove immigrants to the U.S. In addition, she said, there has been a surge in immigrants coming from countries other than Mexico and Central America — chiefly from Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela and Haiti — and largely driven by poverty and food insecurity resulting from the pandemic.

Now, there is rising concern that a new surge may soon be coming. On April 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it was terminating its Title 42 order, effective May 23.

“After considering current public health conditions and an increased availability of tools to fight COVID-19 (such as highly effective vaccines and therapeutics), the CDC Director has determined that an Order suspending the right to introduce migrants into the United States is no longer necessary,” according to the CDC press release.

In a March 28 report, the Department of Homeland Security cautioned, “Once this Order is lifted, DHS anticipates a significant increase in migration and enforcement encounters.”

“The DHS Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) produced projections for post-Title 42 Southwest Border encounters describing low, medium, high, or very high encounter scenarios,” DHS wrote in the report. “These scenarios underpin planning assumptions that generate requirements which in turn drive operational execution. Based on these projections the SBCC [Southwest Border Coordination Center] is currently planning for 6,000, 12,000 (high) and 18,000 (very high) encounters per day.”

On the day that CDC announced it would be lifting the Title 42 order, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas released a statement saying that DHS will process migrants at the border as they had before the Title 42 order.

“Nonetheless, we know that smugglers will spread misinformation to take advantage of vulnerable migrants,” Mayorkas said. “Let me be clear: those unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States will be removed.”

Mayorkas said the administration has “put in place a comprehensive, whole-of-government strategy to manage any potential increase in the number of migrants encountered at our border. We are increasing our capacity to process new arrivals, evaluate asylum requests, and quickly remove those who do not qualify for protection. We will increase personnel and resources as needed and have already redeployed more than 600 law enforcement officers to the border.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are holding up a bipartisan COVID-19 relief bill to insist that Congress vote on an amendment to reinstate the Title 42 restrictions.

Debt and Deficits

Debt — The federal debt held by the public has climbed another 2.2% since our first report on Biden’s numbers. 

As of April 11, the public debt, which does not include money the government owes itself, had increased to $23.85 trillion – up from $23.34 trillion when we last checked on Jan. 18.

Under Biden, the public debt so far has increased 10%. It increased by 50% during Trump’s four years in office.

Deficits — As for annual deficits, however, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that federal borrowing declined during the first six months of fiscal year 2022 when compared with the same period in fiscal year 2021. 

In its most recent monthly budget review, the CBO said the deficit through the first six months of the current fiscal year (from October 2021 to March 2022) was $667 billion, roughly 40% of the $1.71 trillion deficit during the same six-month period in fiscal year 2021.

The CBO said the cumulative deficit for the first half of fiscal 2022 is also lower than the deficits of $691 billion and $743 billion during the first six months of fiscal 2019 and 2020, respectively.

In July, CBO projected that the deficit for the full fiscal year would be $1.15 trillion, dropping to $789 billion in fiscal 2023 and remaining under $1 trillion through fiscal 2025.

Trade

The international trade deficit grew more than 40% under Trump and has continued to increase under Biden.

The latest BEA figures show that the U.S. imported over $907 billion more in goods and services than it exported during the most recent 12 months ending in February. That trade gap was $230.4 billion, or 34.1%, higher than in 2020.

In the first two months of 2022, the U.S. imported a monthly average of $89.2 billion more in goods and services than it exported — putting the country on pace for its largest annual trade deficit on record.

Refugees

Biden is still far off from reaching his goal — first set as a candidate — to admit 125,000 refugees into the United States each fiscal year.

As president, Biden set the cap at 125,000 for fiscal year 2022, which began Oct. 1, 2021, and ends Sept. 30, 2022. But to accomplish that goal, the U.S. would have to admit on average 10,417 refugees each month. So far, State Department data show that the U.S. in the first six months of fiscal year 2022 has admitted a total of only 8,758 refugees, or less than 1,500 per month.

In Biden’s first full 14 months in office, the U.S. has admitted 18,766 refugees, or about 1,340 per month. That’s 27% less than the 1,843 monthly average during Trump’s four years. (For both presidents, our monthly averages include only full months in office, excluding the month of January 2017 and January 2021, when administrations overlapped.)

In setting the goal at 125,000 for fiscal year 2022, the State Department said the global pandemic “will undoubtedly impact” its ability to process refugees in large numbers, as it did in fiscal years 2020 and 2021. The department also said it needed to rebuild its staff and provide more resources after four years of neglect by the Trump administration.

“Significant additional investments in staffing and infrastructure in early FY 2022 will be necessary to build the foundation for higher numbers in subsequent years,” the department said in a report to Congress. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced more than 4.5 million Ukrainians to flee the country. The Biden administration has said it will accept up to 100,000 Ukrainians into the United States by whatever legal means are available, “including the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, parole, and visas.”

However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an April 6 interview that “the normal refugee program” takes too long. “What we’re doing right now is looking at what are the legal pathways that we can do that because there’s the normal refugee program, but that, by definition, takes a long time,” Blinken said. “It takes a couple years.”

Health Insurance

The latest information from the National Health Interview Survey shows that the percentage of Americans without health insurance dropped from 2020 to 2021. The estimates, which are early release figures subject to some final editing and weighting, are that 8.9% of the population lacked health insurance at the time they were interviewed in the third quarter of 2021. That’s compared with 9.7% in the third quarter of 2020 and 10.3% in the fourth quarter of 2020.

That’s a decrease of 1.4 percentage points from the last quarter of the Trump presidency to the third quarter of Biden’s.

The NHIS’ latest report doesn’t give estimates for the number of the uninsured, as opposed to the percentage. Its report for the first six months of 2021 had estimated the number of the uninsured dropped by about 500,000 in the first six months of 2021, compared with 2020. We’ll have to wait for the NHIS’ full-year estimates for updated figures.

Data for the NHIS are collected by the Census Bureau, which separately issues annual reports on the number lacking health insurance for the entire year. The report for 2021 is not expected until this coming fall.

In 2021, 11.3 million people were enrolled in Affordable Care Act exchange plans, through HealthCare.gov and state-run marketplaces. In this year’s open enrollment period, 14.5 million people were enrolled in plans for 2022, with 3 million of them being new consumers, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. 

Carbon Emissions

In Biden’s first 11 months in office, there were more than 4.4 billion metric tons of emissions from the consumption of coal, natural gas and various petroleum products, according to the EIA’s latest monthly figures. That was 7% more than the 4.1 billion metric tons that were emitted from consuming those energy sources over the same stretch in 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. Emissions from coal and petroleum have increased under Biden, while emissions from natural gas have gone down slightly.

As of April, the EIA said it expects energy-related CO2 emissions to increase by 2% this year, “primarily from growing transportation-related petroleum consumption.” The EIA projects that petroleum and coal-related emissions will increase in 2022 by 4% and 3%, respectively, while natural gas emissions are projected to remain relatively flat.

Oil Production and Imports

U.S. crude oil production averaged roughly 11.37 million barrels per day during Biden’s most recent 12 months in office (ending in February), according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data published in March. That was 0.8% higher than the average daily amount of crude oil produced in 2020.

Through the first two months of 2022, the EIA estimates crude oil production averaged 11.61 million barrels per day — about 11% more than the average for the first two months of 2021. In its Short-Term Energy Outlook for April, the EIA said it expects production to average 12.0 million barrels per day in 2022, which would be a higher average than every year except 2019.

On the other hand, U.S. crude oil imports in Biden’s first full year increased to an average of nearly 6.2 million barrels per day — up 4.8% from 2020 imports. The EIA forecasts that the U.S. will remain a net importer of crude oil in 2022.

Crime

So far, the best available crime figures for Biden’s time in office come from the Major Cities Chiefs Association. It gathers information from law enforcement agencies in big cities, and it has data from 70 agencies for all of 2021. According to the association’s latest report, there were 9,548 homicides in those cities in 2021, up 6.2% from 2020.

Although Biden had been criticized by Republicans for the rise, the number of murders had already increased significantly before Biden took office. From 2019 to 2020, homicides went up 32.7%, according to the association’s statistics gathered from 66 city law enforcement agencies.

The latest report shows aggravated assaults increased by 3.1% from 2020 to 2021, while the number of rapes went up by 4.3%. Robberies were down by 3.2%.

In 2020, aggravated assaults were also up, compared with 2019, but the number of rapes and robberies were both down.

Nationwide crime statistics from the FBI for the prior year are typically available in September; however, we may not get 2021 figures. The FBI said in March that a quarterly report for 2021 was based on data from only 52.5% of the 18,818 law enforcement agencies in the country, below the FBI’s 60% reporting threshold for providing trend data for the entire population. Therefore, the agency said it wouldn’t provide such data. 

The Crime Report, a publication of the Center on Media, Crime & Justice at John Jay College, said one reason for the low response rate could be reduced staffing during the COVID-19 pandemic. We asked the FBI about this issue and whether it would publish nationwide statistics for 2021 later this year, but we have not received an answer.

Guns

Gun purchases continued to decline during the first quarter of 2022, according to estimates from the gun industry’s trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Since the federal government doesn’t collect data on gun sales, the NSSF estimates gun sales by tracking the number of background checks for firearm sales based on the FBI’s National Instant Background Check System, or NICS. The NSSF-adjusted figures exclude background checks unrelated to sales, such as those required for concealed-carry permits.

The NSSF-adjusted NICS total for background checks during the first three months of 2022 was more than 4.2 million – down about 23% from nearly 5.5 million in the first quarter of 2021, the group said.

Background checks for firearm sales in the first quarter of 2022 were 25% lower than the 5.63 million in the last quarter of 2020, when Trump was still in office.

Stock Market

Looking at the entirety of Biden’s time in office, stocks have done well, with the S&P 500 on April 13 closing 17% higher than it was the day before Biden was inaugurated. 

Despite dire warnings from Trump that the stock market would crash if Biden were elected, stocks continued to soar through 2021. But 2022 has been a different story, with a 7.2% drop in the S&P 500 since the market’s peak in late December.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is made up of 30 large corporations, is up 11.7% over the entirety of Biden’s presidency so far. But it is down 6.1% since its peak in early January.

The NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies, including many in the technology sector, has risen 3.4% overall since Biden took office. But it has lost 15% since its peak in mid-November.

With the exception of a pandemic-induced plunge in stock prices in March 2020, the stock market has risen relatively steadily for a dozen years. The S&P 500 index rose 166% over the eight years Obama was in office, and it climbed another 67.8% during Trump’s four years. The pace of growth under Biden so far is about the same as under Trump, but it is currently trending in the wrong direction.

In remarks on Jan. 7, near the height of the stock market, Biden gloated about the continuation of the markets’ rise in 2021, saying, “And, by the way, the stock market — the last guy’s measure of everything — is about 20% higher than it was when my predecessor was there.” With stocks dropping since then, Biden hasn’t mentioned it publicly again.

Judiciary Appointments

Supreme Court — On April 7, Biden won confirmation for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. Her appointment fulfills Biden’s campaign promise that “as president, I’d be honored, honored to appoint the first African American woman to the court because it should look like the country. It’s long past time.”

Jackson, who was confirmed by a 53-47 Senate vote, will take the seat of retiring Justice Stephen Breyer this summer.

At the same point in his term, Trump also had won confirmation for one Supreme Court justice.

Court of Appeals — As of April 13, Biden had won confirmation for 15 U.S. Court of Appeals judges. Trump had confirmed 14 at the same point in his tenure.

District Court — Forty-three Biden nominees have been confirmed to federal District Court judgeships, while Trump had won confirmation for 17 at the same point. 

Two U.S. Court of Federal Claims judges also have been confirmed under Biden.

As of April 13, there were 76 federal court vacancies, with 19 nominees pending.

Food Stamps

Fewer people are accessing benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, since Biden took office, according to the Department of Agriculture’s latest data.

As of December, the most recent month for which preliminary figures are available, 41.4 million people were receiving food assistance. The number has gone down by about 691,000, or 1.6%, since January 2021, when Biden took office. The number has inched up, however, since our last update in January. At that time, the latest data was from October 2021. By December, the number of people receiving food assistance had increased in two months by about 214,000.

Under Trump, there were as few as 36.9 million collecting SNAP benefits in February 2020. But that figure increased to as many as 43 million beneficiaries in June 2020, as more people turned to the program during the height of the pandemic.

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The post Biden’s Numbers (First Quarterly Update) appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

In his first State of the Union address, President Joe Biden focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, before turning to his accomplishments and agenda for the coming year. Some of his statements didn’t square with the facts.

• Biden said the planned release of 60 million barrels of global oil reserves, including 30 million from the U.S., “will help blunt gas prices here at home.” But energy experts said the emergency measures aren’t enough to have an impact.
• He said the economy added 369,000 manufacturing jobs last year, which is about right. But the manufacturing sector hasn’t recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic, and manufacturing job growth (3.1%) is slower than overall job growth (4.6%).
• The president said “our economy created over 6.5 million new jobs just last year, more jobs in one year than ever before.” That’s true based on raw numbers, but not on a percentage basis. The claim also doesn’t acknowledge the unique economic conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Biden prematurely claimed he’d be the first president to cut the annual deficit by $1 trillion in a single year. Even if it happens at the end of this fiscal year, the deficit would still be among the highest in history.
• Biden suggested that a soldier from Ohio developed lung cancer “from prolonged exposure to burn pits.” A scientific review by the National Academies, however, found there is not enough evidence to conclude such exposure is associated with cancer.
• He implied that the United States no longer invests almost 2% of its GDP in research and development, falling behind China. But recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data show total U.S. R&D intensity was over 3% — higher than China’s 2.2%, though China may soon surpass the U.S.
• He said, “Now our infrastructure is ranked 13th in the world.” A 2019 report supports that, but some say the ranking underrates the U.S.
• Biden misleadingly said the tax cuts enacted in 2017 “benefited the top 1% of Americans.” Americans in every income category got tax cuts. It isn’t until 2027 when most of the individual income tax cuts in the law are set to expire that the top 1% sees the lion’s share of the tax benefits.
• The president wrongly called gun manufacturing “the only industry in America that can’t be sued.” Though gun manufacturers are protected from some civil lawsuits, there are exceptions. There are also other industries that are shielded from certain legal actions.

Biden spoke to Congress on March 1.

Analysis

Strategic Petroleum Reserve

In discussing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the impact on the global economy, Biden announced that dozens of countries had agreed to release 60 million barrels of oil from reserves — including 30 million barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

“These steps will help blunt gas prices here at home,” Biden claimed. But oil prices continued to rise despite the announcement, and energy experts said the emergency measures aren’t enough to have an impact.

The BBC reported that Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil prices, reached $110 a barrel — the highest level in more than seven years, despite the announcement of the release of 60 million barrels of oil reserves. In a similar report on the continued surge in oil prices despite the planned release, the Wall Street Journal quoted Daniel Hynes, senior commodity strategist at ANZ in Sydney, as saying: “The sheer magnitude of the supply at risk of disruption means even a decent chunk of reserves being released may not make a dent.”

Likewise, S&P Global said in a blog post that the “announcement of the release of 60 million barrels of crude brought little comfort to oil markets, as it was largely in line with expectations and seen as insufficient to act as a counterweight to the disruption to Russian oil supplies.” Market strategist Yeap Jun Rong of IG in Singapore told S&P Global that the markets are “clearly disappointed with the size of the strategic reserves release.”

“[T]he 60 million barrels equivalent to just 4% of its overall emergency stockpiles and accounting for less than one day of worldwide oil consumption,” he said.

Manufacturing Jobs Boast

After ticking off a list of company announcements on new investments, the president boasted: “All told, 369,000 new manufacturing jobs are created in America last year alone.” That’s close to accurate, but lacks context.

Since Biden took office in January, the U.S. economy has added 375,000 manufacturing jobs, measuring from January 2021 to January 2022. Employment in manufacturing now stands at 12.6 million jobs. But that’s 226,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than the U.S. had in February 2020, so the sector has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

Also, the growth of manufacturing jobs has lagged the overall economy. The addition of 375,000 manufacturing jobs represents an increase of 3.1%, while the economy during that time added more than 6.6 million total jobs, a gain of 4.6%.

More on Jobs

Biden again boasted about record employment gains during his first year as president — without acknowledging that historical comparisons are skewed by the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In fact, our economy created over 6.5 million new jobs just last year, more jobs in one year than ever before in the history of the United States of America,” he said.

That’s true, but the record comes with some asterisks.

As we have noted before, the U.S. economy had lost nearly 22 million jobs at the beginning of the pandemic, in March and April 2020, when large parts of the economy shut down. By the time Biden took office, only about 57% of those jobs had come back, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates. That meant there was still a lot of ground to make up.

And, despite the progress that has been made under Biden, total nonfarm employment in January was still about 2.9 million jobs below the pre-recession peak in February 2020.

It’s also worth noting that Biden presided over the largest one-year increase in raw numbers — but not on a percentage basis.

In Jimmy Carter’s first year as president in the late 1970s, employment went up by 4.8%, and it went up by 4.98% in Carter’s second year — higher than the 4.6% increase under Biden. There also were several years during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s when jobs increased by larger percentages.

Comparing the percentage increase — rather than raw numbers — helps account for changes in the size of the labor force and the overall population over time.

Deficit Cutting

Biden said he would be the first president to cut the federal government’s annual deficit by $1 trillion.

Biden: By the end of this year, the deficit will be down to less than half of what it was before I took office. The only president ever to cut the deficit by more than $1 trillion in a single year.

That may turn out to be true — the current fiscal year is less than half over and a lot could still happen. But in historical context it would be less dramatic than it might sound.

The first time the entire annual deficit even reached $1 trillion was the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2009. The pandemic pushed it to a record of over $3.1 trillion in the year ending Sept. 30, 2020, and in the most recent fiscal year it was still nearly $2.8 trillion.

During the first four months of the current fiscal year the deficit has declined dramatically. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s monthly budget review, the deficit was $259 billion during the period, or roughly one-third of what it had been in the comparable period a year earlier.

CBO said most of the reduction came from increased revenue, not from any penny-pinching by Biden. The economy surged faster than expected, and workers’ pay rose, producing more taxes being withheld.

Should trends continue, the deficit for the current fiscal year could easily be less than half the record $3.1 trillion reached the year before he took office, as Biden said. But it would still be among the half-dozen or so highest in history.

Burn Pits and Cancer

In the part of his address dedicated to veterans, Biden linked burn pits, or open air waste incineration sites that were common near U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, to cancer. While more research is needed, it’s worth noting that scientists have not yet found a clear link between burn pits and cancer.

When troops come home after being “stationed at bases and breathing in toxic smoke from burn pits,” the president said, many service members are “never the same. Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness. A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin.”

Biden went on to mention his son, Beau Biden, who served in Iraq and died from brain cancer in 2015, along with Sgt. 1st Class Heath Robinson, who was stationed in Baghdad and succumbed to lung cancer.

“[C]ancer from prolonged exposure to burn pits ravaged Heath’s lungs and body,” Biden said.

The president was careful to say that it’s not known whether burn pits caused his son’s cancer, but he was less circumspect in describing Robinson’s case.

The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine has reviewed the scientific evidence and, in two reports, has concluded that there isn’t enough evidence to show a connection between burn pits or other airborne hazards encountered by such service members and cancer. 

As we’ve written, when Biden previously claimed that “more people are coming home from Iraq with brain cancer … than any other war,” a 2011 report by the Academy on the long-term health effects of burn pit exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan found that there was “inadequate/insufficient evidence” to determine whether there is an association with cancer.

Another report in 2020 similarly found “inadequate or insufficient evidence of an association between airborne hazards exposures in the Southwest Asia theater and the subsequent development of respiratory cancers.”

It’s important to note that the reports do not mean that burn pits haven’t caused cancers — and we don’t have any specific knowledge of Robinson’s case. But it’s also true that researchers do not have much evidence that burn pits have caused cancers, as one might assume when hearing Biden’s description.

In his address, Biden announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs plans to propose adding certain rare cancers to the presumed service-connected list as related to military environmental exposure. The list doesn’t include brain cancer, but does list several cancers of the lung, among others.

According to the VA press release, the department said that “through a focused review of scientific and medical evidence there is biologic plausibility between airborne hazards, specifically particulate matter, and carcinogenesis of the respiratory tract, and that the unique circumstances of these rare cancers warrant a presumption of service connection.”

“The rarity and severity of these illnesses, and the reality that these conditions present a situation where it may not be possible to develop additional evidence prompted us to take this critical action,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough added in the release.

Research and Development

Diverging from his prepared remarks, Biden misled on the proportion of the United States’ gross domestic product invested in research and development.

“But folks, to compete for the jobs of the future, we also need to level the playing field with China and other competitors,” Biden said. “We used to invest almost 2% of our GDP in research and development. We don’t now … China is.”

Biden made similar claims last spring while advocating the passage of the American Jobs Plan, aspects of which were later incorporated into the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed in November.

Biden was likely referring to federal research funding, which has fallen below 2%, according to an analysis of federal R&D funding by Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. 

But as we reported last May, the United States’ total R&D funding — which includes private business and nonprofits — was over 3% in 2019 (the last year for which data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was available for both countries). 

“In the United States, R&D intensity surpassed the 3% milestone for the first time, while the R&D intensity of China grew from 2.1% to 2.2%,” the OECD said in a March 2021 report. (“R&D intensity” is another term for domestic expenditure on R&D as a percentage of GDP.)

Experts we consulted told us that China has been heavily investing in research and development and may soon surpass the U.S. — but it hasn’t done so just yet.

“As far as I can assess there is no way you can say that China is ahead of the U.S. in R&D,” Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told us last year.

Atkinson cowrote a 2019 analysis of federal funding for research and development that said the U.S. government invests about $125 billion per year in R&D. In 2017, the U.S. federal government invested about $26 billion more than the Chinese government in “absolute and purchasing power parity terms (controlling for each nation’s cost of living),” the report said.

13th in Infrastructure

In talking about the bipartisan infrastructure law, Biden said, “America used to have the best roads, bridges, and airports on Earth. Now our infrastructure is ranked 13th in the world.”

His claim is based on a 2019 Global Competitiveness Report by the World Economic Forum, in which the U.S. overall ranked second among 141 economies, but 13th when looking at infrastructure.

But some say the report underrates the U.S. on infrastructure. As the Washington Post’s Charles Lane stated, the countries listed ahead of the U.S. are smaller and therefore have less infrastructure challenges. The list is topped by Singapore, followed by the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Germany, France, Austria, United Kingdom, and United Arab Emirates. The six continental countries in Europe should also count as a unit, he argued. This adjustment, Lane said, “puts the United States in the top five.”

And when considering the largest countries in the world, both geographically and in terms of population, the U.S. comes first in terms of infrastructure in the list. China, for example, ranked 36th, Canada 26th, India 70th and the Russian Federation 50th.

Although U.S. infrastructure ranked 9th in the 2018 report and higher in previous years, the 13th place is an improvement when compared with the 2011-12 report that ranked U.S. infrastructure in 24th place out of 142 economies.

On Trump Tax Cuts

As he often does, Biden cherry-picked from the 2017 tax cuts backed by then-President Donald Trump to claim that the law “benefited the top 1% of Americans.”

Biden: Unlike the $2 trillion tax cut passed in the previous administration that benefited the top 1% of Americans, the American Rescue Plan helped working people — and left no one behind.

Americans in every income category saw tax cuts from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in the immediate years after the law passed in 2017. Biden and other Democrats regularly focus on the latter years of the legislation, when the balance of tax cuts shift to the wealthiest Americans. As we have written, in order for the legislation to be passed via reconciliation, most of the individual income tax provisions are set to expire by 2027, while the corporate tax cuts would remain, making the tax benefit distribution more lopsided for the top 1% than in earlier years.

So, while the top 1% got 20.5% of the total tax benefits in 2018, and 25.3% of the tax benefits in 2025, the share of the total tax savings that accrues to the top 1% in 2027 is 82.8%, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center.

Republicans say they expect a future Congress will extend the individual tax cuts, rather than allowing taxes for many to increase, but that will be up to a future Congress to decide.

Biden went on to say that while Republicans have long promised that the benefits of tax cuts for “those at the top” would “trickle down,” they instead led to “lower wages.”

We can’t say what the impact of the Trump-championed tax cuts may have been on wages, but as we wrote in October for our story “Trump’s Final Numbers,” the average weekly earnings of all private-sector workers, in “real” (inflation-adjusted) terms, rose 8.7% in Trump’s four years. Wages for rank-and-file production and nonsupervisory workers — who make up 81% of all private-sector workers — went up 9.8% under Trump.

Gun Manufacturers and Liability

Biden repeated a false claim about gun manufacturers that he has made several times in the past.

The president called on Congress to “repeal the liability shield that makes gun manufacturers the only industry in America that can’t be sued.”

Gun makers are protected from some, but not all, civil lawsuits under federal law. Other industries, such as vaccine manufacturers and administrators, also receive certain liability protections.

As we have previously reported, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act does largely prevent licensed manufacturers, dealers, sellers of firearms or ammunition, and trade associations from being sued over the misuse of guns or ammunition.

But the 2005 law outlines six exceptions through which civil lawsuits can be brought against firearm manufacturers. These exceptions include cases in which there was negligence on behalf of the firearm seller, a firearm was transferred with the knowledge that it would be used to commit a crime, and manufacturers and sellers violated state or federal law when marketing or selling a firearm.

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