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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The post Biden’s Numbers, April Update 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.

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The post Biden’s Numbers, January 2023 Update 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.

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.

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

The statistics for the entirety of Donald Trump’s time in office are nearly all compiled. As we did for his predecessor four years ago, we present a final look at the numbers.

• The economy lost 2.9 million jobs. The unemployment rate increased by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3%.
• Paychecks grew faster than inflation. Average weekly earnings for all workers were up 8.7% after inflation.
• After-tax corporate profits went up, and the stock market set new records. The S&P 500 index rose 67.8%.
• The international trade deficit Trump promised to reduce went up. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 40.5% from 2016.
• The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million.
• The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.
• Home prices rose 27.5%, and the homeownership rate increased 2.1 percentage points to 65.8%.
• Illegal immigration increased. Apprehensions at the Southwest border rose 14.7% last year compared with 2016.
• Coal production declined 26.5%, and coal-mining jobs dropped by 16.7%. Carbon emissions from energy consumption dropped 11.5%.
• Handgun production rose 12.5% last year compared with 2016, setting a new record.
• The murder rate last year rose to the highest level since 1997.
• Trump filled one-third of the Supreme Court, nearly 30% of the appellate court seats and a quarter of District Court seats.

Analysis

In the fall of 2020, we published a preelection update to our quarterly “Trump’s Numbers” series, and on President Joe Biden’s inauguration, we examined several statistical indicators on what he inherited. But as we noted then, the books weren’t yet closed on the Trump presidency.

It takes several months for some of the data to be finalized. While it’s likely some numbers will be revised in the future, we now have measures for Trump’s complete time in office.

Some of these figures, notably the net job loss and gross domestic product, were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which struck in Trump’s final year in office, becoming a defining issue of his tenure. Scientists quickly developed very effective vaccines, two of which were authorized for emergency use in the U.S. while Trump was still president in December 2020. But by the day Trump left office, 401,000 people had died from the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and the economic fallout was far from over.

Some data points appeared to weather the economic impact: After-tax corporate profits and crude oil production rose, and the stock market, after taking an initial hit, continued to set records. Other statistics run counter to claims or promises Trump made: For instance, illegal immigration, the trade deficit and the federal debt — measures he vowed to lower — went up instead, rising even before the 2020 global pandemic began.

As we’ve often said, readers may find these statistics to be good, bad or neutral, and opinions differ on how much credit or blame a president should get for what happens while he is in office. We leave those judgments to others.

Jobs and Unemployment

As a candidate, Trump proclaimed: “I am going to be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”

As president, Trump saw 100 months of continuous U.S. monthly job gains end in February 2019 as the economy slowed. In 2020, job growth collapsed entirely when COVID-19 went from being a localized problem in Wuhan, China, to a global pandemic.

Employment — A record eight years and four months of monthly job gains — dating to October 2010 — ended February 2019, roughly a year before the pandemic. The U.S. lost 50,000 jobs that month. The U.S. would go on to add 2 million jobs in 2019, but that was the lowest annual growth since 2010.  

And then the novel coronavirus struck. In two months, March and April 2020, the U.S. economy lost a staggering 22.4 million jobs.

Most of those jobs (56%) would return before Trump left office. But he ended his presidency with an economy that had 2.9 million fewer jobs than when he started — becoming the first president in modern times to experience a net loss of jobs over his time in office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has monthly employment figures dating to 1939.

Unemployment — As a candidate, Trump frequently criticized the monthly unemployment rates as “phony numbers.” But as president, Trump immediately began to take credit for driving down the unemployment rate, which at 4.7% was already close to full employment when he took office in January 2017. Two months into Trump’s term, then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer joked about his boss’s change of heart: “I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly — ‘They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.’”

The unemployment rate would continue to drop under Trump — until the pandemic. A month before widespread lockdowns would virtually shut down the economy, the unemployment rate stood at 3.5% in February 2020, the lowest since December 1969. During the pandemic, the unemployment rate peaked at 14.8% in April 2020, the highest since BLS began tracking the figure in 1948.

When Trump’s term ended in January 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.3% — which was 1.6 percentage points higher than when he took office, but still lower than the unemployment rates when Presidents Jimmy Carter (7.5%), George H.W. Bush (7.3%) and George W. Bush (7.8%) left office.

Job Openings — For nearly two years, Trump and the White House boasted that the U.S. had more job openings than workers to fill them. That was the case for 23 straight months from March 2018 through February 2020 — a month before the pandemic lockdown began to swell the ranks of the unemployed.

When Trump left office, the number of unfilled job openings stood at just 7.1 million — which was 25.7% more than when he took office. But, because of the COVID-19-induced high unemployment rate, there were still 3 million more job-seekers than job openings.

Labor Force Participation — Republicans frequently blamed then-President Barack Obama for a declining labor force participation rate — which is the percentage of the population age 16 and older that is either employed or looking for work in the previous four weeks. It’s true that the labor force participation rate declined, from 65.7% to 62.8%, during Obama’s two terms — although the downward trend began in 2000 and continued during Obama’s time in office, largely due to demographics, including the retirement of baby boomers.

Under Trump, the rate seemed to stabilize and even ticked upward, reaching a high of 63.4% in January 2020. But, by the time he left office, the rate had dropped to 61.4% — falling another 1.4 percentage points under Trump after going down 2.9 points during the Obama years.

A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found “the onset of the covid-19 crisis led to a wave of earlier than planned retirements.”

Manufacturing Jobs —  The U.S. economy added manufacturing jobs every month during Trump’s first 18 months in office. But those job gains began to erode — beginning in March 2019, a year before the pandemic — and took a deep dive as the virus crisis forced a wave of plant closings.

Nearly 1.4 million manufacturing jobs were lost in March and April 2020. When Trump left office, there were 154,000 fewer people employed in manufacturing than when he became president. That followed a net decrease of 194,000 under Obama.

Economic Growth

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. economy began slowing down. The real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product went up in Trump’s first two years, peaking at an estimated 2.9% in 2018 — the highest since 2005. But the economy grew only 2.3% in 2019 and the bottom fell out in 2020.

The real GDP declined 3.4% in 2020 from the previous year. It was the largest drop since 1947, when the nation’s economy declined 11.6% after years of economic expansion fueled by World War II.

As a candidate and president, Trump promised the nation’s economy would grow on an annual basis by 4% to 6%. But it never topped 3%.

Income and Poverty

Household Income — Household income rose briskly under Trump before declining last year due to the pandemic.

The Census Bureau’s latest report on “Income and Poverty in the United States,” which was released Sept. 14, showed that median household income reached $67,521 in 2020 — a 2.9% decrease from 2019 but an increase of $3,838 from 2016 when adjusted for inflation. That’s an increase in median household income of 6% during Trump’s four years. (The median is the midpoint — half of all households earned more, half less.)

However, a Census statistician told FactCheck.org that the bureau, in the next couple of months, will publish work that accounts for survey nonresponse due to the pandemic, which could change the 2020 income estimates.

In addition, Census officials have said that some caution should be exercised when making comparisons to estimates prior to 2017, since recent estimates reflect improvements made to the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement in 2014 and 2019. The bureau previously published adjusted estimates showing what median household income would have been for past years, had the current questionnaire and processing procedures been in place.

On that adjusted basis, the increase during Trump’s four years would be slightly higher — $4,083, or 6.4%, in 2020 dollars.

Poverty — As incomes decreased, the official poverty rate increased about 1% from 2019. It was at 11.4% in 2020, up from 10.5% in 2019. It was the first increase in the official poverty rate after five consecutive years of declines, dropping 1.3 percentage points in 2015, 0.8 points in 2016, 0.4 points and 0.5 points in Trump’s first two years, and 1.3 points in 2019.

In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, nearly 3.3 million more than in 2019.

Overall, since 2016, the year before Trump took office, the poverty rate dropped by 1.3 percentage points, and the number of people in poverty went down by 3.4 million.

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

The supplemental poverty rate fell significantly last year, from 11.8% in 2019 to 9.1% in 2020 — “the lowest rate since estimates were initially published for 2009,” Census said in a Sept. 14 report.

“Stimulus payments, enacted as part of economic relief legislation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved 11.7 million individuals out of poverty. Unemployment insurance benefits, also expanded during 2020, prevented 5.5 million individuals from falling into poverty,” the bureau said.

Under Trump, the overall supplemental poverty rate fell nearly 5 percentage points, from 14% in 2016 to a record low 9.1%, and the number of people in poverty fell by nearly 15 million.

Regulations

The growth of federal regulation slowed to a crawl under Trump.

The number of restrictive words and phrases (such as “shall,” “prohibited” or “may not”) contained in the Code of Federal Regulations stayed below 1.08 million for most of 2019— a little below where it was when Trump took office. But as of the day he left office, the count had crept up to just under 1.09 million — an increase of 10,141 (or 0.9%) since Trump’s inauguration.

That small increase during Trump’s four years is a big departure from the past, when restrictions grew 12.3% during Bush’s eight years and by 12.5% during Obama’s eight years, according to annual figures from the QuantGov tracking project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

That slowdown under Trump may be temporary, however.

In what it called “the largest deregulatory initiative of this administration,” the Trump administration issued a final rule that nullified Obama-era fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks. Trump’s rule requires them to maintain an average efficiency of 40.4 miles per gallon by model year 2025, down from the 46.7 mpg set under Obama. But now the Biden administration is proposing new rules that it estimates will result in average efficiency of 48 mpg by model year 2026. 

Crime

Murders and aggravated assaults shot up dramatically under Trump, while most other types of crime declined.

In his inaugural address, Trump darkly portrayed America as a country mired in poverty, drugs and crime. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” he promised. But quite the contrary, the FBI’s annual Crime in the United States report, released Sept. 27, shows 4,157 more homicides were committed in 2020 than in 2016, when Trump was elected. (See Table 1.)

That translates to a murder rate per 100,000 people of 6.5 in 2020, an increase of 1.1 points since 2016. The 2020 rate was the highest since 1997, though still well below the peak 10.2 rate recorded in 1980.

The rate of aggravated assaults also rose under Trump — by 12.6%.

However, the rate of reported rapes declined by 6.1%, and the rate of robberies went down 28.2%. The burglary rate dropped 33%, and the rate of larcenies and thefts went down 19.9%, while the rate of motor vehicle thefts edged up a scant 3.7%.

The big jump in the number of murders is entirely due to a 29% rise in Trump’s final year, which also saw millions laid off from jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic; widespread protests against racism and police brutality following a Minneapolis policeman’s murder of a black man, George Floyd; and a surge in production and sales of firearms.

Guns

Sales and production of guns slowed during Trump’s presidency — until COVID-19 concerns and protests against policing triggered huge spikes last year. 

Handgun Production — In 2020, the annual production of pistols and revolvers in the U.S. set a new record of 6.3 million, according to interim figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

That represented a 75% spike from last year and an increase of 12.5% from 2016, when production surged to a previous record high of nearly 5.6 million.

Gun Sales — Gun sales also slowed during Trump’s presidency — until last year.

The government doesn’t collect data on gun sales. But the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the gun industry’s trade group — 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 figure for the sales of firearms in Obama’s final year reached a then-record high of 15.7 million. Gun sales didn’t approach that level in each of Trump’s first three years. But, in Trump’s last year in office in 2020, firearm sales set a new high of nearly 21.1 million.

The NSSF-adjusted figures are only an approximation of actual sales, since some of these checks cover purchases of multiple weapons, and of course some sales still occur without background checks. 

Border Security

Illegal border crossings, as measured by apprehensions at the Southwest border, were 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year in office compared with the last full year before he was sworn in.

That’s how we’ve been calculating this statistic going back to our “Numbers” articles for Obama.

Although Trump boasted during a speech in Alamo, Texas, just a week before he left office that “we reformed our immigration system and achieved the most secure southern border in U.S. history,” the number of apprehensions for illegal border crossings was higher during Trump’s presidency than either of Obama’s four-year terms.

But these statistics tell only part of the story. The number of apprehensions fluctuated wildly during Trump’s presidency, from a monthly low of 11,127 in April 2017 to a high of 132,859 in May 2019.

After constant talk on the campaign trail about building a wall and cracking down on illegal immigration, the number of apprehensions plummeted in the immediate months after Trump’s inauguration — “what became known as the Trump Effect,” Jessica Bolter, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told us. The monthly low of 11,127 in April 2017 is unmatched in Customs and Border Protection records going back to 2000.

But the numbers crept back up in late 2017 and early 2018. There was another small dip after the so-called zero tolerance policy was initiated in mid-2018, Bolter said. Trump administration policy required the Department of Homeland Security to refer all adults who illegally entered the U.S. for criminal prosecution. That resulted in children being separated from their parents, who entered the federal court system and were placed in detention centers for adults only. But after Trump signed an executive order ending the policy, apprehensions again rose, Bolter said. 

The number of apprehensions peaked in mid-2019, and the year ended with the highest number of apprehensions since 2007. In response, Trump issued several policies to reduce immigration flows, including measures to restrict eligibility for asylum and return non-Mexican asylum seekers who cross the Southwest border to Mexico while their claims work their way through immigration courts (the so-called “Remain in Mexico” program). Correspondingly, apprehensions dropped steadily through the second half of 2019 and into 2020.

And then, when the pandemic hit, apprehensions dropped even more dramatically in April and May 2020. As a result of the pandemic, there was an increased restriction on mobility, not just in the U.S. but around the world, Bolter said.

In response to the pandemic, Trump put into place a series of policies aimed at blocking migration to the U.S., including one that allowed border patrol to quickly expel any illegal immigrants they stopped, without access to the appeals system.

While the policy may have deterred families with children from crossing, it served as an incentive for single adults to attempt illegal crossings, multiple times if necessary, Bolter told us. And so there was an increase in apprehensions in the second half of 2020.

Trump didn’t fulfill the signature promise of his 2016 campaign — to build a 1,000-mile-long wall along the Southwest border. Nonetheless, a substantial amount of fencing was constructed.

In total, 458 miles of “border wall system” was built during the Trump administration, according to a CBP status report on Jan. 22, 2021. Most of that, 373 miles of it, is replacement for primary or secondary fencing that was dilapidated or outdated. In addition, 52 miles of new primary wall and 33 miles of secondary wall were built in locations where there were no barriers before.

Since the land border itself is 1,954 miles long, according to the US-Mexico International Boundary and Water Commission, the new fencing constructed under Trump covers just over 20% of the Southwest border. Together with what existed before Trump took office, there are now about 706 miles of barriers, about 36% of the total Southwest border.

Corporate Profits

After-tax corporate profits set new records in the first two years of Trump’s presidency — but declined slightly in 2019 and fell further still in 2020, when the pandemic forced businesses to close, some permanently. 

Still, after-tax corporate profits were higher when Trump left office than when he arrived.

Corporate profits hit a record $1.98 trillion in 2018 (see line 45), up from the previous record of $1.88 trillion set in 2017. Profits dipped in 2019 ($1.95 trillion) and again in 2020 ($1.91 trillion).

Despite the two-year decline, after-tax corporate profits were 8.5% higher last year than they were in 2016, the year before Trump’s inauguration.

An April study by economists at the Federal Reserve estimated that from March 2020 through February 2021 the “excess establishment exit” — that is, permanent closures beyond what would otherwise have been expected — was below 200,000 establishments. That implies “an exit rate about one-quarter to one-third above normal,” the study said. 

While many of those closures would involve small businesses that are not corporations, the figures give some indication of the economic impact of the pandemic.

Stock Market

After a pandemic-induced plunge in stock prices in March 2020 ended a decade-long bull market, the stock market quickly recovered and set new record highs.  

On Jan. 19, 2021, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock average closed at 67.8% above where it had been the day before Trump was inaugurated in 2017. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, was up 56.7% during Trump’s time in office.

And the NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies including many in the technology sector, more than doubled under Trump — up 138.2% since he took office.

These gains came after sizable increases in the market under Obama, when the S&P rose 166% and the Dow Jones went up 138% over his eight years, after the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

Wages and Inflation

During Trump’s four years in office, wages went up and inflation remained in check.

CPI — The Consumer Price Index rose 7.6% under Trump — continuing a long period of low inflation that appears to be coming to an end under Biden, as supply chain problems and other factors drive up costs.

The CPI rose an average of 1.9% each year of the Trump presidency (measured as the 12-month change ending each January), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was about the same as the average under Obama (1.8%) and below the average of 2.4% during each of George W. Bush’s years.

By contrast, CPI was up 5.3% in August compared to a year ago. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said at a panel discussion in late September that he expected inflation pressures to continue into 2022.

Wages — Meanwhile, paychecks grew faster than prices during Trump’s tenure.

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.

The gains extended a trend that started after the 2007-2009 recession. During the Obama years, real weekly earnings rose 4.2% for all workers, and 4% for rank-and-file.

Consumer Sentiment

Consumer confidence in the economy initially rose under Trump, who promised during the campaign to “make our economy grow again.” But, like other economic measures, it fell during the pandemic. 

The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers monthly index was 87.2 in October 2016, a month before the 2016 presidential election, and 98.5 in January 2017, when Trump took office. Under Trump, the consumer confidence rate reached 100 or more five times — a level that it hadn’t reached during Obama’s eight years or any of the prior four years during Bush’s second term. 

The rate under Trump peaked at 101.4 in March 2018 — the highest it had been since January 2004. It was at 101 in February 2020, a month before the pandemic shut down large parts of the economy. From there, the rate fell 11.9 points in March 2020 and plunged another 17.3 points in April 2020, when the rate dropped to 71.8 — its lowest level during the Trump presidency.   

When Trump left office, the preliminary figure for January 2021 was 79 — 8.2 points lower than where it was in October 2016, just before Trump was elected, and 19.5 points lower than where it stood when he took office in January 2017. 

Home Prices

Home prices set annual records in each of Trump’s four years in office.

The national median price of an existing, single-family home was $300,200 last year, according to seasonally adjusted annual sales figures from the National Association of Realtors. That’s 27.5% higher than it was in 2016, when the median price was $235,500. 

Much of the rise has taken place since the pandemic hit. Existing single-family home prices jumped 12.9% from February 2020 to January 2021. Experts attribute the higher prices to high demand, supply shortages and record-low mortgage rates.  

The Realtors’ figures reflect raw sales prices without accounting for inflation. But home prices far outstripped inflation during Trump’s tenure. The Consumer Price Index rose only 7.6% during that same period.

Homeownership

The percentage of Americans who own their homes continued to recover under Trump, but it has yet to return to the highs of 2004.

The homeownership rate, which the Census Bureau measures as the percentage of housing units that are owner-occupied, peaked at 69.2% for two quarters in 2004. From there, the rate steadily fell for more than a decade, and tied for the lowest on record in the second quarter of 2016 at 62.9%. (Census Bureau homeownership rates date to 1965, when the rate was 62.9% for the first nine months of that year.)

The rate recovered 0.8 points in Obama’s last six months, and the trend generally continued over the last four years. In Trump’s last quarter in office, the homeownership rate reached 65.8% — 2.1 points higher than it was when he took office. 

The Census Bureau, however, urged data users to “exercise caution when comparing the second, third, and fourth quarter 2020 estimates” to previous quarters because of the pandemic and changes in data collection caused by the pandemic. Census said it suspended in-person data collection in March 2020, because of the spread of the coronavirus.

Trade

The international trade deficit Trump once promised to reduce grew larger instead, increasing three out of his four years in office.

The most recent government figures show that the total U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was almost $677 billion — the highest since 2008 and an increase of 40.5% from 2016.

Annual exports of goods and services decreased 4.6% in 2020 compared with 2016. Meanwhile, annual imports of goods and services were up 3.4% in 2020 compared with four years earlier.

Trump’s record with several key trading partners was a mixed bag.

China — After increases in his first two years, the annual goods-and-services trade deficit with China decreased in 2019 and 2020. The nearly $285 billion deficit with China in Trump’s final year as president was 8.2% lower than it was the year before he took office.

Canada — Trump inherited an almost $11 billion goods-and-services trade surplus with Canada, which later became a $261 million annual deficit in 2019. While it rebounded to a $4.6 billion surplus in 2020, that figure was 57% lower than it was in 2016.

Mexico — The annual goods-and-services trade deficit with Mexico steadily increased throughout Trump’s four-year presidency. As of 2020, it was up to $112 billion, which was 75% higher than the roughly $64 billion deficit in 2016.

Health Insurance Coverage

The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million under Trump.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported Sept. 14 that the number of Americans who lacked health insurance for all of 2020 was 28 million — up from 25.1 million in 2016. That’s an increase of 2.9 million.

The percentage of Americans without coverage for all of 2020 rose to 8.6%, from 7.9% in 2016.

During Trump’s tenure, the number of uninsured Americans rose for the first time in a decade in 2018.

(A technical note: Due to changes in survey methods, the latest Census report says that 2018 and later estimates can be compared with 2016 estimates from a research file, available here.)

The Census report matches a trend measured on a more frequent and timely basis by the National Health Interview Survey. The NHIS put the number of people who lacked coverage at the time they were interviewed — not necessarily for the entire year — at 31.6 million in 2020, an increase of 3 million over 2016.

The NHIS said 9.7% of the population lacked coverage at the time of interview in 2020, up from 9% in 2016.

Trump failed to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act as he promised to do, but his administration did slash advertising and outreach aimed at enrolling people in Obamacare plans. In December 2017, he signed a tax bill that ended the ACA’s tax penalty for people who fail to obtain coverage, effective in 2019. And in March 2019 the Trump administration joined an effort by GOP state attorneys general seeking a court decision to overturn the entire act. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled the plaintiffs in that case lacked standing, meaning they did not demonstrate “an injury ‘fairly traceable’ to the ‘allegedly unlawful conduct,’” the court said in its opinion.

Food Stamps

Trump trimmed the rolls of food-stamp recipients, but only modestly.

The number getting food stamps (now known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance) rose by 14.7 million under George W. Bush and by another 10.7 million under Obama, but fell back only 738,469 by the end of Trump’s time in office. That’s a decline of 1.7% under Trump.

Trump had attempted to cut the number of recipients even further, for example, by tightening work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents. And indeed the total number of recipients dipped below 36.9 million in February 2020. But then the COVID-19 pandemic forced 22 million out of work.

Trump then reversed course. He signed a bipartisan emergency relief bill that (among other things) both suspended the new work requirement rule temporarily and made families eligible for food stamps if their children had received free or reduced-cost meals at schools that were then closed.

During his last month in office, nearly 42 million Americans were still receiving the food aid. That’s about 12.5% of the population, or 1 out of 8 Americans.

Judiciary Appointments

In one term, Trump’s nominees filled one-third of the Supreme Court, nearly 30% of the appellate court seats and a quarter of District Court seats.

Supreme Court — Trump won Senate confirmation for three Supreme Court nominees, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed in late October by the Republican-led Senate, about a week before the Nov. 3 election. Trump filled one-third of all seats on the high court during his term.

Obama was able to fill only two high court vacancies during his first term (and as it turned out, during his entire eight years in office) — with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan.

Court of Appeals — Trump also won confirmation of 54 U.S. Court of Appeals judges (30 during his first two years and another 24 in his last two years). That’s far more than the total for Obama in his first term, when he won confirmation for 30 judges (16 during his first two years and 14 more in the subsequent two years). And Trump’s total is just one shy of the 55 confirmations Obama achieved over eight years. 

Trump installed nearly 30% of all the 179 appellate court judges authorized by federal law.

District Court — Trump won confirmation for 175 of his nominees to be federal District Court judges.

That’s nearly 26% of the 677 authorized district judges. Obama won confirmation for 143 in his first term and 127 in his second.  

Trump also filled 10 seats on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which has nationwide jurisdiction over lawsuits seeking money from the government. And he filled three seats on the U.S. Court for International Trade. Obama filled four seats on the Court for International Trade and no seats on the Court of Federal Claims during his eight years in office.

Trump must share responsibility for this record with Republicans in the Senate.

The Republican-majority Senate not only refused to consider Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy eventually filled by Gorsuch, but they also blocked confirmation of dozens of Obama’s nominees to lower courts. Trump inherited 17 Court of Appeals vacancies, for example, including seven that had Obama nominees pending but never confirmed.

Debt and Deficits

The federal debt held by the public went up by half under Trump, and deficits also increased each fiscal year on his watch.

Debt — Trump made no progress in erasing the debt, which the then-presidential candidate once said he could probably do in eight years.

Rather, the amount the federal government has borrowed from the public went up by 50% during Trump’s time in office — from $14.4 trillion on the day he was inaugurated to $21.6 trillion the day his successor was sworn in.

Likewise, the debt as a percentage of the economy also grew under Trump, rising from 76.2% of GDP in fiscal year 2016 to 100.1% of GDP in fiscal year 2020, according to figures from the Office of Management and Budget.

Deficits — Trump left office almost four months after the U.S. recorded its largest annual deficit of $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020.

That historic shortfall was mostly the result of the coronavirus pandemic, which reduced government revenues and spurred massive government spending (and borrowing) to help the nation cope with the economic and public health challenges of the pandemic. But, prior to that, annual deficits had consistently risen under Trump, going from $585 billion in fiscal 2016 — the last full budget cycle before Trump’s presidency — to $984 billion in fiscal 2019.

In addition, as of January 2020, which preceded the March declaration of the pandemic, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had projected that the deficit would reach $1 trillion in fiscal 2020 and average $1.3 trillion between fiscal years 2021 and 2030.

Then, three weeks after Trump was no longer president, CBO projected that, solely based on laws already in effect as of Jan. 12, the fiscal 2021 deficit would be $2.3 trillion. It continued to rise after Biden took office, as the new president and a Democratic-controlled Congress provided still more pandemic relief.

Coal and Environment

Coal Mining Jobs — As a candidate, Trump promised to “put our [coal] miners back to work,” but that didn’t happen.

There were 8,500 fewer coal mining jobs in January than when Trump took office. That’s a decline of 16.7%. 

Even before the pandemic, coal mining jobs were on the decline under Trump. There were 50,900 coal mining jobs in January 2017, when Trump became president. But at the end of 2019, there were 47,700 such jobs — a decline of 3,200. The job losses continued in early 2020 and accelerated during the pandemic — dropping to a new low of 38,000 in April 2020. 

The job losses continued a trend that began decades ago. In January 1985, there were 170,500 coal mining jobs, but the industry hasn’t had more than 100,000 jobs since January 1995. In Obama’s eight years, the industry lost 35,500 jobs, a decline of 41%.

U.S. coal production declined by 26.5% under Trump, from 728 million short tons in 2016 to 535 million short tons in 2020. Last year’s production was the lowest annual level since 1965. EIA expects U.S. coal production to increase 15% this year.

Carbon Emissions — Carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption dropped sharply last year because of the global economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Emissions in the U.S. fell to 4.6 billion metric tons — the lowest level since 1983 and an 11.5% decrease from 2016, according to Energy Information Administration data. 

But even before the pandemic, U.S. carbon emissions largely have been on the decline.

In a July report, the EIA said U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions peaked at 6 billion metric tons in 2007 and fell to 5.1 billion by 2019 — a 14% drop. “This decline in emissions occurred even though U.S. real GDP grew by 22% during the same period,” the EIA report said.

The EIA attributed the decline to numerous factors, including cheaper natural gas, an expansion of clean energy capacity, and improved energy efficiency of buildings, vehicles and equipment.

Under Trump, annual emissions rose once in four years, when they increased by 2.8% in 2018. The following year, in 2019, CO2 emissions fell 2.6% before dropping sharply during the pandemic last year. 

EIA expects CO2 emissions to increase by about 7% in the U.S. this year as the economy improves and travel increases.  

Oil Production and Imports

The increase in crude oil production that began under Obama continued under Trump, soaring to new record highs before COVID-19 contributed to a decline in 2020.

The 4.1 billion barrels produced last year were still more than in any year other than 2019, when nearly 4.5 billion barrels were produced, according to the Energy Information Administration. Even with the down year, crude oil production was up 27.6% in 2020 compared with 2016.

Increased domestic production under Trump led to fewer annual crude oil imports, which were down 25% in 2020 from four years earlier. The total number of imported crude oil barrels in 2020 — 2.15 billion — was the lowest total since 1991.

However, while the U.S. again became a net exporter of petroleum products last year, it remained a net importer of crude oil, specifically, the EIA said.

Editor’s note: In January, we plan to publish our first quarterly report on President Joe Biden. 

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The post Trump’s Final Numbers appeared first on FactCheck.org.

In remarks at a Pfizer manufacturing site, President Joe Biden made misleading claims while boasting about his administration’s progress in getting Americans vaccinated against COVID-19.

• Biden claimed that the Trump administration had “failed to order enough vaccines.” It had contracts in place for plenty of vaccines for all Americans, provided other vaccines gained authorization; Biden increased the orders from the two companies with authorized vaccines.
• The president claimed there was “no real plan to vaccinate most of the country” when he took office. There was indeed a plan to acquire and distribute vaccines. The Biden administration has done more on increasing vaccination sites and vaccinators.
• Biden exaggerated when he claimed that vaccinations have “nearly doubled” on his watch. Even measured at its peak, the seven-day rolling average has gone up 67%.
• He said Moody’s Analytics estimated that if his full COVID-19 relief plan becomes law, “the economy will create 7 million jobs this year.” But the financial services firm said 3.5 million of those jobs would be created regardless.
• Biden said without his COVID-19 relief plan, 40 million Americans would lose their benefits under the federal nutrition program. To add context, Biden’s plan would extend a 15% benefit increase enacted in December for an additional three months.

Biden spoke on Feb. 19 at Pfizer’s Kalamazoo, Michigan, manufacturing site.

Ordering Enough Vaccines

Biden claimed that the previous administration had “failed to order enough vaccines.” But that’s misleading.

The Biden administration increased the federal government’s vaccine orders with Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech. But the Trump administration had options in place to order more from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech.

The Trump administration also had contracted for even more doses from other companies, but that plan depended on those vaccines getting Food and Drug Administration authorization.

“Just over four weeks ago, America had no real plan to vaccinate most of the country,” Biden said, going on to say his predecessor “failed to order enough vaccines, failed to mobilize the effort to administer the shots, failed to set up vaccine centers. That changed the moment we took office.”

We’ll start with the claim that the Trump administration hadn’t ordered “enough vaccines.” As we’ve written before, the federal government, as of Dec. 31, had contracted to buy at least 800 million COVID-19 vaccine doses with delivery by July 31. Those doses included vaccines from four companies who have not yet received FDA authorization.

And a Government Accountability Office report, released on Jan. 28, said in a footnote that updated information from the vaccine companies and the Department of Defense “indicate there are at least one billion vaccine doses under contract as of January 2021. Moreover, the government may acquire additional doses through the exercise of options or execution of new agreements.”

So, the Trump administration had clearly ordered “enough” vaccine doses for the U.S. population. However, the issue right now is that only the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are authorized. (The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee is meeting on Feb. 26 to discuss the Janssen Biotech vaccine candidate.)

In December, Pfizer and Moderna had agreed to provide 400 million doses (200 million each) by the end of July. The initial agreement with the Trump administration was for 200 million doses total from the two companies, but it made agreements for another 200 million total, according to the GAO report.

The Biden administration announced this month the two companies would provide yet another 200 million doses by the end of July, for a total of 600 million.

And Biden announced the federal government would get some of those doses sooner than previously expected, with 100 million of the doses from each company promised by the end of May, rather than the end of June.

It’s worth noting that the Trump administration could have increased its order with Pfizer and Moderna as well. The U.S. government announced its initial agreement with Pfizer in July, contracting for 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine once it was approved. That agreement included an option to acquire an additional 500 million doses from Pfizer.

Similarly, the government’s initial contract with Moderna, announced in August, was for 100 million doses of a vaccine once approved, with an option to buy another 400 million doses.

As for Biden’s claim that there was “no real plan to vaccinate most of the country,” the Washington Post Fact Checker wrote about a similar claim from Vice President Kamala Harris. The Fact Checker explained that there were vaccination plans that the Biden administration had built upon. But the two administrations have a philosophical difference on how much of a role the federal government, as opposed to state and local entities, should play in vaccinating the country.

On Sept. 16, nearly three months before the first FDA authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine, the Department of Health and Human Services, with support from the Department of Defense and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released a report to Congress, outlining a strategy for vaccine distribution and a playbook for states and localities “on how to plan and operationalize a vaccination response to COVID-19 within their respective jurisdictions,” according to the HHS press release.

The Government Accountability Office, however, in a report released Jan. 28, said it had recommended that HHS go further to “establish a time frame for documenting and sharing a national plan for distributing and administering COVID-19 vaccine” including “how efforts would be coordinated across federal agencies and nonfederal entities.” GAO said that its recommendation hadn’t been “fully implemented.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN on Feb. 16 that there had been a vaccine distribution plan but a “rather vague” plan on “getting the vaccine doses into people’s arms.”

“Getting the vaccines made, getting them shipped through Operation Warp Speed was okay,” Fauci said. “But I believe what the vice president is referring to is what is the process of actually getting these doses into people. That is something that we had to get much better organized now with getting the community vaccine centers, getting the pharmacies involved, getting mobile units involved.”

The Biden administration has taken steps to increase the number of people who can administer the vaccines and where the shots can be given, including by shipping vaccines directly to retail pharmacies and opening mass vaccination sites operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. These steps have also come as vaccine availability has increased.

Vaccine Supply

Biden exaggerated when he claimed that vaccinations have “nearly doubled” on his watch.

Biden, Feb. 19: We’re now at a point where we’ve seen the average daily number of people vaccinated nearly double, from the week before I took office, to about 1.7 million average per day getting a shot.

Actually, on the day Biden spoke, the average daily number of people vaccinated had increased by 31% — not “nearly double.”

On the day Biden took office, the seven-day “moving average” for the previous week was about 971,500 shots a day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID Data Tracker. By Feb. 19, when Biden visited Pfizer, the daily average was at 1,270,728 vaccinations. 

The average had been higher in the days before. On Feb. 14, the seven-day moving average hit a peak of 1,621,578. That’s a 67% increase — sizable, but still not “nearly double.”

This is not the first time that Biden has exaggerated his administration’s progress in vaccinating the public.

Earlier this month, Biden tweeted this about his promise to administer 100 million vaccine doses in his first 100 days in office: “With the progress we’re making I believe we’ll not only reach that, we’ll break it.” But, as we wrote, the seven-day daily average was at 1 million doses per day on Biden’s second day in office — so he was well on his way to meeting his 100-day goal.

Moody’s Analytics Analysis

Biden, as he has several times before, said “an analysis by the Wall Street firm Moody’s estimates that if we pass my American Rescue Plan, the economy will create 7 million jobs this year.”

But the Jan. 15 analysis from Moody’s Analytics didn’t say Biden’s economic plan alone would be responsible for the addition of all those jobs, as the president’s statement could suggest.

Moody’s said that, assuming Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan is fully enacted by March, gross domestic product would grow to 8% for 2021 and 4% in 2022. “At this pace of growth, the economy would create 7.5 million jobs in 2021 (December to December) and 2.5 million in 2022 to fully recover the jobs lost since the pre-pandemic peak,” the analysis said.

The report, however, noted that projected economic growth “is almost double the growth that would be expected without any additional fiscal support.”

The chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, Mark Zandi, who co-authored the analysis of Biden’s proposal, confirmed that means nearly half of the projected job gains for this year are likely to occur even if the president’s plan doesn’t become law.

“If there is no additional fiscal support, the economy will create 3.5 million jobs during this period [December 2020 and December 2021], or 4 million less than if the Biden plan is passed,” Zandi told us in an email.

At least one time, Biden himself has made that distinction more clear.

“Wall Street investment firm, Moody’s, says if we pass the American Rescue Plan, it will lead to 4 million more jobs than otherwise would be created,” he said in Feb. 5 remarks at the White House, for example.

Food Stamps

In advocating for the American Rescue Plan, the president said “40 million Americans will lose nutritional assistance through a program we call SNAP, the old food stamp program” if the relief plan isn’t enacted.

“Do we not invest $3 million — $3 billion to keep families from going hungry?” he said.

That claim needs context.

The White House transcript of Biden’s remarks added the words “some of their” in brackets before “nutritional assistance.” If Biden’s plan isn’t enacted, those Americans in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — 42.9 million as of September, the latest figures available — would lose “some of” their benefits, but not until the end of June.

COVID-19 relief legislation passed in December put in place a 15% SNAP benefit increase that will last through June; Biden’s plan would extend that 15% boost until September. In announcing the plan in January, the White House said Biden “is also committed to providing this boost for as long as the COVID-19 crisis continues, and will work with Congress on ways to automatically adjust the length and amount of relief depending on health and economic conditions.”

The post Biden’s Misleading Vaccine Boasts appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

During Donald Trump’s time in office:

• The economy lost 3.9 million jobs.
• Economic growth fell short of what Trump promised, then crashed during the pandemic.
• The number of murders went down — but rebounded this year.
• Corporate profits set records — until this year.
• Stock prices and home prices set records. Paychecks grew faster than prices. Poverty decreased.
• The trade deficit Trump promised to reduce grew larger instead.
•  Illegal immigration subsided, then surged, then fell back again.
• The number of people without health insurance went up by 7.1 million, according to a government survey.
• Trump installed nearly 30% of federal appellate judges and 24% of district court judges authorized by federal law.

Analysis

This is the last update before the Nov. 3 election. It’s our 11th quarterly update of the “Trump’s Numbers” scorecard that we posted in January 2018 and have updated every three months, most recently on July 17. 

Here we’ve included statistics that may seem good or bad or just neutral, depending on the reader’s point of view. That’s the way we did it when we posted our first “Obama’s Numbers” article more than seven years ago — and in the quarterly updates and final summary that followed. And we’ve maintained the same practice under Trump. 

Then as now, we make no judgment as to how much credit or blame any president deserves for things that happen during his time in office. Opinions differ on that.

Jobs and Unemployment

Job growth slowed a bit under Trump — then collapsed as the COVID-19 crisis led to mass unemployment. The job numbers have yet to fully recover.

Employment — After nine years and five months of constant monthly job gains — the longest such streak on record — more than 22 million jobs disappeared between mid-February and mid-April.

Just over half of those jobs (52%) were recovered in the next five months as COVID-19 restrictions eased and many businesses were allowed to reopen. The president calls this the “Great American Comeback.”

Nevertheless, as of mid-September, the most recent month on record, total employment was still 3.9 million lower than where it was when Trump took office in January 2017.

Back in 2016 Trump boasted that he would be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” But only 661,000 jobs were regained in September, and at that rate Trump is on pace to end his term with a net loss of employment.

Unemployment — The unemployment rate, after falling at times to the lowest rate in half a century, hit a high of 14.7% in April, by far the highest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the figure in 1948.

As portions of the economy have reopened, the jobless rate has turned back down. But as of mid-September the rate was 7.9% — still way above the 4.7% rate Trump inherited when he took office.

Job Openings — The COVID-19 shock ended what had been a worker shortage.

As of the last business day of August, the most recent figure on record, the number of unfilled job openings stood at just under 6.5 million — which was 15.8% more than when Trump took office.

But there were still 7.1 million more job-seekers than job openings.

The number of unfilled jobs had been as high as 7.5 million as recently as January 2019, which was the highest in the 20 years the BLS has tracked this figure. And for 23 consecutive months, starting in March 2018, the number of available jobs exceeded the number of unemployed people looking for work.

But that all came to an end soon after the White House declared a COVID-19 emergency, sending millions into unemployment.

Labor Force Participation — The unemployment rate would be even higher except for the fact that over 5 million people age 16 and over have left the labor force entirely since February, and therefore are not counted as “unemployed.” The government counts a person as unemployed only if they are out of a job despite being available for work and actively seeking a job during the most recent four weeks.

As a result of the labor-force exodus, the labor force participation rate — the portion of the entire civilian population age 16 and older that is either employed or currently looking for work in the last four weeks —  dropped another 1.4 points under Trump after going down 2.9 percentage points during the Obama years.

Republicans used to criticize then-President Barack Obama for the decline during his time, even though it was due mostly to the post-World War II baby boomers reaching retirement age, and other demographic factors beyond the control of any president. Now it’s down to an even lower level, due mainly to another uncontrollable factor.

Manufacturing Jobs —  Manufacturing jobs — which had increased during Trump’s first three years — took a deep dive as the virus crisis forced a wave of plant closings.

Nearly 1.4 million manufacturing jobs were lost in March and April. More than half of those (716,000) had been regained as of September.

But the net result is that 164,000 fewer people were employed in manufacturing in September compared with when Trump took office. That followed a net decrease of 192,000 under Obama.

Economic Growth

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic sent the economy into a deep recession, the U.S. economy had been growing more slowly than Trump once promised.

The historical picture has changed a bit since our July update, because the Bureau of Economic Analysis revised its historical gross domestic product figures on July 30 as a result of its annual update using newly available information such as data from corporate income tax returns. Changes go back five years.

BEA now estimates that real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product grew 2.2% last year (0.1% less than its previous estimate) and 3.0% the year before (0.1% higher than previously).

Both were better than the 1.7% growth in 2016 (revised upward 0.1% from before). But now growth in Trump’s best year falls short of Obama’s best year, 2015, which was revised upward to 3.1%.

Growth under Trump has fallen well short of the 4% to 6% per year that he promised repeatedly, both when he was a candidate and also as president.

Growth halted in February as the economy entered a sudden, steep recession. In the second quarter of 2020 the economy shrank at an annual rate of 31.4%, according to the BEA.

That was by far the worst quarter since 1947, when the government began quarterly tracking of real GDP. The worst previously was the January-March quarter of 1958, when real GDP went down at a yearly rate of 10%.

The economy is now recovering as states ease COVID-19 restrictions — but slowly.

The most recent forecast of the Federal Reserve Board members and Federal Reserve Bank presidents, issued Sept. 16, produced a median estimate of a 3.7% drop in real GDP for all of 2020 (measured from fourth quarter to fourth quarter, rather than from year to year). 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is more pessimistic. It issued an updated forecast July 2 projecting a 5.9% decline in GDP this year measured quarter to quarter (or 5.8% measured year to year). CBO said it now expects growth in the last half of this year will be even slower than it expected in May.

Income and Poverty

Household Income — Household income soared during Trump’s first three years in office, reaching a record. But Census officials cautioned that much of the increase appears to be a statistical fluke.

The Census Bureau’s published measure of median household income reached $68,703 in 2019, an apparent increase of $5,805 from 2016 after adjusting for inflation. (The median figure represents the midpoint — half of all households earned more, half less.)

In percentage terms, the apparent increase during Trump’s first three years is 9.2% — including a record 6.8% increase in 2019 alone.

But that huge 2019 jump is illusory. It’s based on a survey conducted each March, asking about the previous year’s income. But this year the survey occurred during the turmoil of a pandemic-induced partial shutdown of the economy. Census said that this year a far higher percentage of households failed to respond to the income survey than previously, and higher-income households were more likely to respond than those with lower incomes. Census said that after adjusting for this bias, “our current estimate is that income in 2019 was about 4.1% higher than in 2018.”

That’s still a healthy increase. Census put the estimated actual level of median household income last year at $66,790 — which would still be the highest level since 1967, the first year for which it published the data. And it would bring down the actual increase during Trump’s first three years to 6.2% — also still a robust figure.

Poverty — As incomes rose, the rate of poverty declined. The number and percentage of Americans living with income below the official poverty line went down — though by how much is in question.

The published Census estimate — based on the same COVID-clouded March survey as the household income figures — shows a decline of 6.6 million in the number of Americans living in poverty, and a reduction in the poverty rate of 2.2 percentage points, to 10.5% of the population.

But Census itself concedes that’s probably not right. “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. That would imply 5.1 million fewer people in poverty and a reduction of 1.6 percentage points in the rate.

Regulations 

The growth of federal regulation has nearly stopped under Trump.

The number of restrictive words and phrases (such as “shall,” “prohibited” or “may not”) contained in the Code of Federal Regulations stayed below 1.08 million for most of last year — a little below where it was when Trump took office. As of October 1, the count had crept up to a little above 1.08 million — an increase of 5,059 (or 0.5%) since Trump’s inauguration.

That the number has barely changed is a big departure from the past, when restrictions grew at an average of 1.5% per year during both the Obama years and the George W. Bush years, according to annual figures from the QuantGov tracking project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

The Mercatus count of restrictions doesn’t attempt to assess the cost or benefit of any particular rule — such assessments require a degree of guesswork and are sensitive to assumptions. But it does track the sheer volume of federal rules with more precision than we have found in other metrics.

Some of the recent changes are just clearing deadwood. In 2018, for example, the Treasury Department scrapped an entire chapter of zombie-like regulations issued by the old Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversaw the savings and loan industry before being abolished in 2011. S&Ls have since fallen under other federal banking regulators, but the obsolete OTS rules remained on the books.

However, many of the rules Trump has eliminated are quite significant. For example, in what it called “the largest deregulatory initiative of this administration,” the Trump administration issued a final rule that nullifies Obama-era fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks. The administration said that instead of commanding automakers to achieve average mileage of 46.7 miles per gallon by model year 2025, the Trump rule will require them to achieve only an average of 40.4 mpg.

Another example: Last year, the EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule took effect, repealing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan rule. The Obama-era rule was designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by shifting away from coal as an energy source and would have required states to meet specific emissions reductions.

Crime

Most crime went down during Trump’s first three years in office — but murder went up last year and took a big jump in the first half of this year.

The FBI’s annual Crime in the United States report, released Sept. 28, showed the number of murders declined 5.7% during Trump’s first three years in office, despite a small 0.3% uptick in 2019. But this year the number of homicides has soared — up 14.8% during the first six months of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019, according to an FBI press release posted Sept. 15.

For comparison, the number of murders in the U.S. increased 9.6% in 2016, when Trump made it a campaign issue, and just 5.8% over the course of Obama’s entire eight years in office.

The FBI said the number of all violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) went down 3.7% during Trump’s first three years, and went down by an unspecified amount in the first six months of this year. Besides the big jump in murders in 2020, aggravated assault also increased, but the number of rapes and robberies declined.

The number of property crimes (burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft) went down 12.6% during Trump’s first three years, and declined another 7.8% in the first half of this year, compared with the same six months a year earlier.

Guns

Sales and production of guns pulled back after Trump became president, but are lately surging again.

Handgun Production — In 2019, annual production of pistols and revolvers in the U.S. totaled 3.6 million, according to interim figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

That represented a decline of 35.2% from 2016, when production surged to a record level of nearly 5.6 million.

Handgun production more than tripled during the Obama years. So the 2019 level was still 99% higher than it had been in 2008, the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency.

Gun Sales — Gun sales also dropped a little — until COVID-19 concerns and summer street protests set off unprecedented new waves of buying this year.

The government doesn’t collect figures on sales of guns. But the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the gun industry’s trade group — tracks approximate sales figures by adjusting FBI statistics on background checks to remove those not related to actual sales, such as checks required for concealed-carry permits.

Those NSSF-adjusted figures hit a record 15.7 million in Obama’s final year, but dropped below that during each of Trump’s first three years. This year the figure reached 15.5 million by September, so the old record seems certain to fall.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of layoffs and sent many flocking to gun stores. An even bigger wave of buying took place in June, as protests over police brutality and racial injustice occurred across the country, some of them turning violent.

During the most recent 12 months on record, the NSSF-adjusted figure for background checks was 23.9% higher than the record year of 2016.

These figures cover rifles and shotguns and previously owned weapons, as well as new handguns. They are only an approximation of actual sales, since some of these checks cover purchases of multiple weapons, and of course some sales still occur without background checks.

Coal and Environment

Coal Mining Jobs — As a candidate, Trump promised to “put our [coal] miners back to work,” but he hasn’t.

As of September, there were 6,400 fewer coal mining jobs than when Trump took office, according to BLS figures. That’s a decline of nearly 13%.

The coronavirus pandemic may have hastened some of the losses, but, in fact, nearly 600 mining jobs were lost last year — long before the virus appeared in China — when two Wyoming mines closed and the owner filed for bankruptcy protection. And Moody’s Investor Services said it had been predicting a 15% to 20% decline in U.S. coal production this year even before the virus hit.

U.S. coal production last year was the lowest in 41 years — and it’s headed much lower this year. During the 12 months ending in August (the most recent month for which figures are available), the Energy Information Administration estimated that 579 million short tons were produced, which is 21% below the figure for 2016.

In October, EIA predicted that coal production would fall 26% in 2020, citing the pandemic and also lower natural gas prices as factors.

Carbon Emissions —  Carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption declined under Trump, continuing a long downward trend that started years before he took office.

Figures from EIA show CO2 emissions were 7.0% lower in the most recent 12 months on record, ending in June, than they were in 2016. Much of the decline is due to the pandemic-induced recession. Emissions in March, April, May and June were running nearly 20% below the same four months in 2019.

In the decade before Trump took office, emissions had already fallen by a total of 14%, due mainly to electric utilities shifting away from coal-fired plants in favor of cheaper, cleaner natural gas, as well as solar and wind power.

EIA is currently estimating that CO2 emissions will fall by a record 10% for all of 2020.

Border Security

Illegal border crossings have subsided after surging last year to the highest in a dozen years. They are now running a bit lower than before Trump took office.

Last year, a monthly average of 66,640 people were apprehended attempting to illegally enter the U.S. at the border with Mexico, the highest level since 2007.

The peak month was May, which saw 132,856 apprehensions, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics. That was the highest total since March 2006, when the monthly total hit nearly 161,000.

During the first eight months of 2020, the average has gone down to 30,435 per month. 

Attempted border crossings tend to be highest in March, April and May and lowest in December. So to even out that seasonal factor, 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 most recent for which figures are available) apprehensions totaled 385,774, just 12.9% below 2016, when the total was 442,940.

Corporate Profits

After-tax corporate profits set new records during Trump’s presidency — until taking a battering during this year’s pandemic.

Newly revised figures now show profits hit a record $1.90 trillion in 2018 (see line 45), and yet another record — $1.94 trillion — last year. But in the recessionary second quarter of this year they sank to an estimated annual rate of $1.56 trillion.

That’s 11% lower than the full-year figure for 2016, the year before Trump’s inauguration.

Stock Market

The pandemic has been a disaster for the economy — but not for the stock market.

A plunge in stock prices in March ended a decade-long bull market and wiped out nearly all the gains of the Trump years. But that quickly turned out to be the shortest bear market in history.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock average has since set new record highs. It closed most recently on October 13 at 55.1% above where it had been the day before Trump was inaugurated. 

Other indexes also reflected investor optimism. At the October 13 close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, was up 45.3% during Trump’s time in office.

And the NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies including many in the technology sector, has more than doubled under Trump — up 114.1% since he took office.

Wages and Inflation

The upward trend in real wages continued under Trump, and inflation remained in check.

CPI — The Consumer Price Index rose 6.8% during Trump’s first 44 months, continuing a long period of historically low inflation.

In the most recent 12 months, ending in March, the CPI rose only 1.4% — held down by a plunge in gasoline prices and the pandemic-triggered economic recession. The CPI rose an average of 1.8% each year of the Obama presidency (measured as the 12-month change ending each January), and an average of 2.4% during each of the George W. Bush years.

Wages — Paychecks continued to grow faster than prices.

The average weekly earnings of all private-sector workers, in “real” (inflation-adjusted) terms, rose 7.1% during Trump’s first 44 months (ending in September).

Those figures include managers and supervisors. Rank-and-file production and nonsupervisory workers  — at least, those who still have jobs — are doing even better than their bosses. Real earnings for those workers (81% of all workers) have gone up 8% so far under Trump.

The gains extend a long trend. Real wages took a dive during the Great Recession of 2007-2009, hitting a low point in July 2008. During the Obama years, real weekly earnings rose 4.1% for all workers, and 4.2% for rank-and-file.

Consumer Sentiment

Consumer confidence in the economy, which at first rose under Trump, took its worst plunge on record when the COVID-19 emergency hit.

The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers monthly index first soared to a peak of 101.4 in March 2018, which was the highest in 14 years. It was still at 101.0 as recently as February.

But in March and April, it took the steepest decline ever recorded, to 71.8. That was the lowest since December 2011, when the nation was struggling to recover from the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

By September — the most recent month on record — the index had crept up to 80.4. But that was still 6.8 points lower than in October 2016, just before Trump was elected after promising to boost economic growth.

Home Prices and Ownership

Home Prices — Home prices soared to record levels during Trump’s tenure.

The national median price of an existing, single-family home set a record high of $315,000 in August, according to sales figures from the National Association of Realtors.

That is $86,300 higher than the median price of $228,700 for homes sold during the month Trump took office — a gain in value of 37.7%. That far outpaced inflation; the Consumer Price Index rose only 6.6% during the same period.

Much of the rise has taken place since the pandemic hit. Single-family home prices jumped 15.5% since February.

The Realtors’ figures reflect raw sales prices without attempting to adjust for such factors as variations in the size, location, age or condition of the homes sold in a given month or year. Even so, a similar pattern emerges from the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which compares sales prices of similar homes and seeks to measure changes in the total value of all existing single-family housing stock.

The Case-Shiller index for July sales (the most recent available) was at a record high — and 20% above where it stood in the month Trump took office. 

Whichever way you measure it, homeowners have seen the value of their houses rise to record levels since Trump became president.

Homeownership — The percentage of Americans who own their homes has continued to recover under Trump.

The homeownership rate hit a record 69.2% of households for two quarters in 2004 before going into a yearslong slide and hitting bottom in the second quarter of 2016 at 62.9%. That was the lowest point in more than half a century, and tied for the lowest on record.

The rate recovered 0.8 points in the six months before Trump took office, and has gone up another 4.2 points since then, to 67.9% in the second quarter of 2020, the most recent Census Bureau figure available.

However, much of that gain is another statistical distortion caused by the pandemic. The reported figure took an unlikely 2.6 percentage point leap in the second quarter alone, nearly triple the largest previous quarter-to-quarter increase (0.9 point in the third quarter of 1979). Realtor’s association economists expressed “serious questions” about the most recent figure’s accuracy, and Census urged “caution” in comparing it to past quarters. Because of the pandemic, Census used telephone interviews rather than in-person interviews during the survey, resulting in a very low response rate.

Trade

The trade deficit that Trump promised to reduce grew larger instead. It fell a bit last year but is rising again this year.

The most recent government figures show that the total U.S. trade deficit in goods and services during the most recent 12 months on record (ending in July) was over $583 billion, an increase of 21.2% over the deficit for 2016.

The deficit seemed to stabilize in 2019, falling 0.5% compared with the previous year, after rising 11.4% in 2018 and 6.3% in 2017, Trump’s first year in office.

But the deficit resumed its rise in 2020, going up 1.8% during the first seven months of the year, compared with the same period a year earlier.

China — The goods-and-services trade deficit with China has finally grown smaller under Trump.

Trump began a full-scale trade conflict with China in early 2018. At first the trade gap with China continued to go up, but that turned around in 2019, when the US-China trade gap went down 19% compared with the previous year. During the most recent 12 months on record (ending in July), the gap was 11.9% lower than the year before Trump took office, according to BEA’s figures.

The trade war continues. Trump signed a “phase one” trade deal with China on Jan. 15, under which the U.S. held off on new tariffs while China promised to buy more U.S. agricultural goods. But China is far behind the pace it promised. As of July, it had increased purchases of U.S. goods at less than half the pace needed to meet the agreed targets, according to tracking published by the Peterson Institute. Furthermore, China has yet to agree to reduce subsidies to exporting businesses or to limit its demands that U.S. businesses share their intellectual property.

Mexico — Meanwhile the trade deficit in goods and services with Mexico has grown much faster than the global trade gap. It totaled $96 billion during the most recent 12 months, an increase of 50% compared with 2016. 

Canada — The trade surplus that the U.S. runs with Canada has turned into a deficit. In 2016, the U.S. sold nearly $10.9 billion more to Canada in goods and services than Canada bought from the U.S. That flipped last year, when the U.S. imported $2.7 billion more from Canada than the other way around. For the most recent 12 months on record the gap widened to $4.4 billion.

On March 13, Canada gave final legislative approval of a new trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico, to replace the 26-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump had promised to scrap during his campaign. The agreement finally took full effect July 1.

Health Insurance Coverage

Millions of Americans lost health insurance under Trump.

The latest figures from the National Health Interview Survey, posted on Sept. 9, put the number of people who lacked coverage in the last six months of 2019 at 35.7 million — an increase of 7.1 million since 2016, the year before Trump took office.

Most of the increase — 5 million — occurred between the first six months of last year and the last half. The NHIS interviews people throughout the year.

Trump failed to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act as he promised to do, but did slash advertising and outreach aimed at enrolling people in Obamacare plans. In December 2017, he signed a tax bill that ended the ACA’s tax penalty for people who fail to obtain coverage, effective last year. In March 2019, the Trump administration joined an effort by GOP state attorneys general seeking a court decision to overturn the entire act. And on June 25 the administration formally asked the Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare. The high court is expected to hear the case in November.

Food Stamps

The number of food stamp recipients dropped to the lowest levels in a decade — but is rising again since the COVID-19 recession hit.

But just how high, the government isn’t yet saying.

As we reported in our last update, the number of recipients rose by nearly 480,000 in March, to 37.3 million or 12.6% below where it stood when Trump took office. 

The number almost certainly shot up from there as the unemployment rate surged and Congress loosened eligibility standards as part of an emergency relief bill. Benefit levels have also increased 40%, making the program more attractive.

Normally figures for April, May and June would be posted by now, but so far none have appeared. When we inquired, the administrator of the Food and Nutrition Service, Pam Miller, issued a statement saying the agency “has identified significant issues with the accuracy of state-reported data in recent months due to COVID-19-related complexities. Therefore, reliable program data are not available at this time.” She didn’t say when data would be made public.

Judiciary Appointments

Trump is putting his mark on the federal appeals courts more quickly than Obama was able to do in his time in office.

Supreme Court — So far, Trump has won Senate confirmation for two Supreme Court nominees, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. But if his nominee Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed by the Republican-led Senate as expected, he will have filled one-third of all seats on the high court during his term.

Obama was able to fill only two high court vacancies during his first term (and as it turned out, during his entire eight years in office) — with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan.

Court of Appeals — Trump also won confirmation of 53 U.S. Court of Appeals judges (30 during his first two years and another 23 in 2019 and so far in 2020). That’s far more than the total for Obama, who won confirmation for 30 as of the same point in his first term (16 during his first two years and 14 more in 2011 and through this date in 2012). 

Trump has now installed nearly 30% of all the 179 appellate court judges authorized by federal law.

District Court — Trump also outpaced Obama on filling lower courts, though by a smaller margin. So far, Trump has won confirmation for 162 of his nominees to be federal District Court judges. That’s nearly 24% of the 677 authorized district judges. Obama had won confirmation for 130 at the same point in his presidency.   

Trump also has filled six seats on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which has nationwide jurisdiction over lawsuits seeking money from the government. And he has filled two seats on the U.S. Court for International Trade. Obama filled none to either court during his first term.

Trump must share responsibility for this record with the Republican majority in the Senate. Republicans not only refused to consider Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy eventually filled by Gorsuch, but they also blocked confirmation of dozens of Obama’s nominees to lower courts. Trump inherited 17 Court of Appeals vacancies, for example, including seven that had Obama nominees pending but never confirmed.

Federal Debt and Deficits

The federal debt has increased by over $6.6 trillion under Trump. And the rise is continuing as the government borrows frantically to fund emergency COVID-19 spending.

The federal debt held by the public stood at over $21 trillion at the last count on Oct. 8 — 46% higher than on the day he took office.

The figure is certain to rise even more as tax revenues fall due to the partial shutdown of the economy, and spending ramps up to aid jobless workers and shuttered businesses.

But even before the COVID-19 emergency, Trump’s cuts in corporate and individual income tax rates — as well as bipartisan spending deals he signed in 2018 and 2019 — caused the red ink to gush faster than it did before. 

The federal government’s annual deficit soared to about $3.1 trillion during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the CBO estimates. (The final, official tally by the U.S. Treasury Department is still being processed.) That’s double the previous record yearly deficit of $1.55 trillion, set in fiscal year 2009.

CBO estimates that the debt in the fiscal year that just ended equaled 98% of the nation’s entire gross domestic product, highest since 1948. And it’s on track to grow to over 104% of GDP in the current fiscal year, CBO estimates. The record is 106% of GDP in 1946, at the end of World War II.

The post Trump’s Numbers, Preelection Update appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Editor’s Note: This update is the first to reflect substantial economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many statistics in our April update were collected before much of the economy was shut down to slow the spread of the virus.

Summary

The COVID-19 emergency and the sudden economic recession it triggered have greatly altered many statistical measures of the Trump years. Since he took office:

• 7.8 million jobs have been lost — including 7,100 coal mining jobs and 274,000 manufacturing jobs.
• The unemployment rate soared to the highest levels since World War II, and stood at 11.1% most recently.
• The economy — which had been growing modestly — shrank at an annual rate of 5% in the first quarter and much worse is predicted in the quarter just ended.
• Stock prices dropped sharply in response to COVID-19, but they have since mostly recovered. The NASDAQ index even set some new records.
• Corporate profits sagged, recently running 6% lower (even after taxes) than before Trump took office.
• But inflation remained low, and real weekly wages (for those who still have jobs) are up 7.3%.

Analysis

This is our 10th quarterly update of the “Trump’s Numbers” scorecard that we posted in January 2018 and have updated every three months, most recently on April 13. We’ll publish additional updates every three months, as fresh statistics become available.

Here we’ve included statistics that may seem good or bad or just neutral, depending on the reader’s point of view. That’s the way we did it when we posted our first “Obama’s Numbers” article more than seven years ago — and in the quarterly updates and final summary that followed. And we’ve maintained the same practice under Trump. 

Then as now, we make no judgment as to how much credit or blame any president deserves for things that happen during his time in office. Opinions differ on that.

Jobs and Unemployment

Job growth slowed a bit under Trump — then collapsed as the COVID-19 crisis led to mass unemployment.

Employment — After nine years and five months of constant monthly job gains — the longest such streak on record — more than 22 million jobs disappeared between mid-February and mid-April.

At the low point in April nearly all the job gains of the previous 10 years were gone. In May and June a little over one-third of those jobs were regained as states eased COVID-19 restrictions and many businesses were allowed to reopen. 

Nevertheless, as of mid-June, the most recent month on record, total employment stood more than 7.8 million below where it was when Trump took office in January 2017.

Even in February, when employment was at its highest, Trump was far behind the pace needed to fulfill his campaign boast that he would be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” Up until then, the average monthly gain under Trump had been 185,000, while the average monthly gain during the four years before he took office was 216,000.

Unemployment — The unemployment rate, after falling at times to the lowest rate in half a century, hit a high of 14.7% in April, by far the highest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the figure in 1948.

As portions of the economy have reopened, the number of jobs has slowly begun to recover, and the jobless rate has turned down. But as of mid-June, the rate was 11.1% — still higher than any month since 1948 except for April and May.

Before the COVID-19 plunge, the jobless rate in February and several earlier months had been 3.5%, the lowest since December 1969 — 50 years earlier — when it was also 3.5%.

Job Openings —  The COVID-19 shock ended what had been a worker shortage.

As of the last business day of May, the most recent figure on record, the number of unfilled job openings stood at 5.9 million. At that point the number had declined by 210,000 —  or 3.8% — since Trump took office.

The number of unfilled jobs had been as high as 7.5 million as recently as January 2019, which was the highest in the 20 years the BLS has tracked this figure. And for 23 consecutive months, starting in March 2018, the number of available jobs exceeded the number of unemployed people looking for work.

But that all came to an end soon after the White House declared a COVID-19 emergency. By the end of May, there were 17.8 million more job-seekers than job openings.

Labor Force Participation — The labor force participation rate — which went down 2.9 percentage points during the Obama years —  dropped another 1.3 points under Trump.

The labor force participation rate is the portion of the entire civilian population age 16 and older that is either employed or currently looking for work in the last four weeks. Republicans often criticized President Barack Obama for the decline during his time, even though it was due mostly to the post-World War II baby boomers reaching retirement age, and other demographic factors beyond the control of any president.

The rate stood at 62.8% when Trump took office, and in February that rate had climbed to 63.4%, a gain of 0.6 percentage points. But all that was lost as the COVID-19 emergency caused many to simply leave the workforce entirely. By June the rate had bounced back a bit, but still stood only at 61.5%.

Manufacturing Jobs —  Manufacturing jobs — which had increased under Trump — took a deep dive as the virus crisis forced a wave of plant closings.

Nearly 1.4 million manufacturing jobs were lost in March and April. A little over 600,000 of those had been regained by mid-June.

But the net result is that as of the latest report, 274,000 fewer people were employed in manufacturing than when Trump took office. That followed a net decrease of 192,000 under Obama.

Economic Growth

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic sent the economy into its current deep recession, the U.S. economy had been growing more slowly than Trump once promised.

Real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product grew 2.3% last year and 2.9% the year before — better than the 1.6% growth in 2016 but far less than the 4% to 6% per year that Trump promised repeatedly, both when he was a candidate and also as president. Growth in Trump’s best year was no better than growth in Obama’s best year, 2015.

That growth halted in February, and the economy entered a sudden, steep recession, according to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research — made up of economists from leading universities. In the first quarter of 2020 the economy shrank at an annual rate of 5%, according to the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The worst is yet to come. The Congressional Budget Office on May 19 forecast an absolute decline of 11% in second-quarter (April-June) real GDP — equivalent to an annual-rate decline of 38%. That would be by far the worst quarter since 1947, when the government began quarterly tracking of real GDP. The worst previously was the January-March quarter of 1958, when real GDP went down at a yearly rate of 10%.

The economy is expected to rebound to some degree as states ease COVID-19 restrictions — but slowly.

The most recent forecast of the Federal Reserve Board members and Federal Reserve Bank presidents, issued June 10, produced a median estimate of a 6.5% drop in real GDP for all of 2020 (measured from fourth quarter to fourth quarter, rather than from year to year). 

CBO is only slightly less pessimistic. It issued an updated forecast July 2 projecting a 5.9% decline in GDP this year measured quarter to quarter (or 5.8% measured year to year). CBO said it now expects growth in the last half of this year will be even slower than it expected in May.

Income and Poverty

Household Income — Before the COVID-19 crisis, household income rose briskly during the Trump administration.

The Census Bureau’s measure of median household income reached $63,179 in 2018, an increase of $1,400 from 2016 after adjusting for inflation.

In percentage terms, the increase during Trump’s first two years is 2.3%. (The median figure represents the midpoint — half of all households earned more, half less.)

The official figure is the highest ever recorded, exceeding previous records set in 2016 and 2017. But Census officials said those recent “records” are all due in part to a change in the survey questions in 2014. Starting then, the annual survey has picked up some sources of income that were previously missed.

Adjusting for that factor, and also for a change in the way Census processed data starting last year, Census officials published “estimated adjusted” figures showing what median household income would have been for past years, had the current questionnaire and processing procedures been in place. On that basis, the latest figure is just a few dollars less than it was in 1999 — $63,231.

The “estimated adjusted” figures also show an even greater increase during Trump’s first two years than the official figures, because the new data processing procedures had the effect of holding down income by a fraction of a percentage point. On an adjusted basis, the increase under Trump would be $1,638, or 2.7%.

Poverty — As incomes rose, the rate of poverty declined. The percentage of Americans living with income below the official poverty line went down to 11.8% of the population in 2018, the lowest level since 2001.

The poverty rate has now declined for four consecutive years, dropping by 1.3 percentage points in 2015, by 0.8 points in 2016 and by 0.4 points and 0.5 points in Trump’s first two years.

Regulations

The growth of federal regulation has nearly stopped under Trump.

The number of restrictive words and phrases (such as “shall,” “prohibited” or “may not”) contained in the Code of Federal Regulations stayed below 1.08 million for most of last year — a little below where it was when Trump took office. As of July 10, the count had crept up to a little above 1.08 million — an increase of 3,624 (or 0.3%) since Trump’s inauguration.

That the number has barely changed is a big departure from the past, when restrictions grew at an average of 1.5% per year during both the Obama years and the George W. Bush years, according to annual figures from the QuantGov tracking project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

The Mercatus count of restrictions doesn’t attempt to assess the cost or benefit of any particular rule — such assessments require a degree of guesswork and are sensitive to assumptions. But it does track the sheer volume of federal rules with more precision than we have found in other metrics.

Some of the recent changes are just clearing deadwood. In 2018, for example, the Treasury Department scrapped an entire chapter of zombie-like regulations issued by the old Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversaw the savings and loan industry before being abolished in 2011. S&Ls have since fallen under other federal banking regulators, but the obsolete OTS rules remained on the books.

However, many of the rules Trump has eliminated are quite significant. For example, in what it called “the largest deregulatory initiative of this administration,” the Trump administration issued a final rule that nullifies Obama-era fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks. The administration said that instead of commanding automakers to achieve average mileage of 46.7 miles per gallon by model year 2025, the Trump rule will require them to achieve only an average of 40.4 mpg.

Another example: Last September, the EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule took effect, repealing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan rule. The Obama-era rule was designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by shifting away from coal as an energy source and would have required states to meet specific emissions reductions.

Crime

Crime declined since Trump took office.

The FBI’s annual Crime in the United States report, released Sept. 30, showed the number of murders declined 6.9% during Trump’s first two years in office.

And the decline continued into the first half of last year, according to the FBI’s preliminary semiannual report released Jan. 21. The FBI tallied 3.9% fewer murders during the first half of 2019 than in the same period in 2018.

The murder rate per 100,000 people went down to 5.0 in 2018, still well above the record low set in 2014, when it was 4.4. The FBI doesn’t calculate rates in its semiannual reports, so the rate for 2019 won’t be known until full-year figures are released, which usually happens in September.

As a candidate, Trump repeatedly claimed that the murder rate was the “highest it’s been in 45 years.” That was far from true. The rate did rise during Obama’s final two years, to 5.4 per 100,000 in 2016. But the highest rate in the past half century was 10.2 in 1980.

The number of violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) went down 3.5% between 2016 and 2018, and dropped another 3.1% in the first six months of 2019, compared with the same period a year earlier.

The number of property crimes (burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft) went down 9.2% during Trump’s first two years, and declined another 5.6% in the first half of last year, compared to the same six months a year earlier.

Guns

Sales and production of guns pulled back after Trump became president, but are lately surging again.

Handgun Production — In 2019, annual production of pistols and revolvers in the U.S. totaled 3.6 million, according to interim figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

That represented a decline of 35.2% from 2016, when production surged to a record level of nearly 5.6 million.

Handgun production more than tripled during the Obama years. So the 2018 level was still 99% higher than it had been in 2008, the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency.

Gun Sales — Gun sales also dropped a little — until COVID-19 concerns and June street protests set off new waves of buying this year.

The government doesn’t collect figures on sales of guns. But the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the gun industry’s trade group — tracks approximate sales figures by adjusting FBI statistics on background checks to remove those not related to actual sales, such as checks required for concealed-carry permits.

Those NSSF-adjusted figures dropped from a record 15.7 million in Obama’s final year to 13.2 million last year.

But the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of layoffs and sent many flocking to gun stores. March alone saw an 80% increase over the same month in 2019. An even bigger wave of buying took place in June, as protests over police brutality and racial injustice occurred across the country, some of them turning violent. June’s NSSF-adjusted figures were 136% above the same month last year.

During the most recent 12 months on record, the NSSF-adjusted figure for background checks was 9.9% higher than the record year of 2016.

These figures cover rifles and shotguns and previously owned weapons, as well as new handguns. They are only an approximation of actual sales, since some of these checks cover purchases of multiple weapons, and of course some sales still occur without background checks.

Coal and Environment

Coal Mining Jobs — As a candidate, Trump promised to “put our [coal] miners back to work,” but he hasn’t.

As of June, there were 7,100 fewer coal mining jobs than when Trump took office, according to BLS figures. That’s a decline of nearly 14%.

The coronavirus pandemic may have hastened some of the losses, but, in fact, nearly 600 mining jobs were lost as early as September — long before the virus appeared in China — when two Wyoming mines closed and the owner filed for bankruptcy protection. And Moody’s Investor Services said it had been predicting a 15% to 20% decline in U.S. coal production this year even before the virus hit.

U.S. coal production last year was the lowest in 41 years — and it’s headed much lower this year. During the 12 months ending in May (the most recent month for which figures are available), the Energy Information Administration estimated that 627 million short tons were produced, which is 14% below the figure for 2016.

The outlook for coal miners has gotten even more bleak since our last report. In July, EIA predicted that coal production would fall 29% in 2020, in part due to lower demand for coal-generated electricity during a virus-induced world economic slump.

Carbon Emissions —  Carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption declined under Trump, continuing a long downward trend that started years before he took office.

Figures from EIA show CO2 emissions were nearly 3.3% lower in the most recent 12 months on record, ending in March, than they were in 2016.

In the decade before Trump took office, emissions fell by a total of 14%, due mainly to electric utilities shifting away from coal-fired plants in favor of cheaper, cleaner natural gas, as well as solar and wind power.

EIA is currently estimating that CO2 emissions will fall by a record 12.2% in 2020 as a result of the slowing economy and restrictions on business and travel related to COVID-19.

Border Security

Illegal border crossings have subsided after surging last year to the highest in a dozen years. But they are still running only slightly lower than before Trump took office.

Last year, a monthly average of 66,640 people were apprehended attempting to illegally enter the U.S. at the border with Mexico, the highest level since 2007.

The peak month was May, which saw 132,856 apprehensions, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics. That was the highest total since March 2006, when the monthly total hit nearly 161,000.

During the first six months of 2020, the average has gone down to 26,227 per month. 

Attempted border crossings tend to be highest in March, April and May and lowest in December. So to even out that seasonal factor, 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, apprehensions totaled 422,316, just 4.7% below 2016, when the total was 442,940.

Corporate Profits

After-tax corporate profits remained near record levels during Trump’s presidency — until taking a battering during this year’s pandemic.

During 2019, they hit $1.85 trillion for the year (see line 45), just under the record $1.86 trillion recorded for 2014. But in the first quarter of this year they sank to an annual rate of $1.64 trillion, with worse likely to come.

The most recent quarterly figure is 6% lower than the full-year figure for 2016, the year before Trump’s inauguration.

Stock Market

The stock market topped a decade-long bull market with new records in early 2020 — until the bottom dropped out in March as the COVID-19 emergency forced businesses to close and lay off millions of workers.

At one point roughly all the gains of the Trump years were erased. But over subsequent weeks stock prices mostly recovered, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ index even set some new records.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock average closed most recently on July 16 at 42.0% above where it had been the day before Trump was inaugurated. 

Other indexes also reflected investor optimism. At the July 16 close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, was up 35.5% during Trump’s time in office.

And the NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies, was up 89.1% under Trump.

Wages and Inflation

The upward trend in real wages continued under Trump, and inflation remained in check.

CPI — The Consumer Price Index rose 5.5% during Trump’s first 41 months, continuing a long period of historically low inflation.

In the most recent 12 months, ending in March, the CPI rose only 0.7% — held down by a plunge in gasoline prices and the pandemic-triggered economic recession. The CPI rose an average of 1.8% each year of the Obama presidency (measured as the 12-month change ending each January), and an average of 2.4% during each of the George W. Bush years.

Wages — Paychecks continued to grow faster than prices.

The average weekly earnings of all private-sector workers, in “real” (inflation-adjusted) terms, rose 7.3% during Trump’s first 41 months (ending in June).

Those figures include managers and supervisors. Rank-and-file production and nonsupervisory workers  — at least, those who still have jobs — are doing even better than their bosses. Real earnings for those workers (81% of all workers) have gone up 8.7% so far under Trump.

Those gains extend a long trend. Real wages took a dive during the Great Recession of 2007-2009, but have been rising now since hitting a low point in July 2008. During the Obama years, real weekly earnings rose 4.1% for all workers, and 4.2% for rank-and-file.

Consumer Sentiment

Consumer confidence in the economy, which at first rose under Trump, took its worst plunge on record when the COVID-19 emergency hit.

The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers monthly index first soared to a peak of 101.4 in March 2018, which was the highest in 14 years. It was still at 101.0 as recently as February.

But in March and April, it took the steepest decline ever recorded, to 71.8. That was the lowest since December 2011, when the nation was struggling to recover from the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

By June — the most recent month on record — the index had crept up to 78.1. But that was still 9.1 points lower than in October 2016, just before Trump was elected after promising to boost economic growth.

Home Prices and Ownership

Home Prices — Home prices soared to record levels during Trump’s tenure, and so far haven’t been affected by the pandemic.

The national median price of an existing, single-family home set a record high of $288,700 in April, according to sales figures from the National Association of Realtors. In May, the most recent figure on record, the median price slipped back only a bit, to $287,700.

That is $59,000 higher than the median price of $228,700 for homes sold during the month Trump took office — a gain in value of 25.8%. The rise in the Consumer Price Index during the same period was 4.9%.

The Realtors’ figures reflect raw sales prices without attempting to adjust for such factors as variations in the size, location, age or condition of the homes sold in a given month or year. Even so, a similar pattern emerges from the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which compares sales prices of similar homes and seeks to measure changes in the total value of all existing single-family housing stock.

The Case-Shiller index for April sales (the most recent available) was at a record high — and 17.9% above where it stood in the month Trump took office. 

Whichever way you measure it, homeowners have seen the value of their houses rise to record levels since Trump became president.

Homeownership — The percentage of Americans who own their homes has continued to recover under Trump.

Back in 2004, the homeownership rate hit a record 69.2% of households for two quarters, but then began a years-long slide, hitting bottom in the second quarter of 2016 at 62.9%. That was the lowest point in more than half a century, and tied for the lowest on record.

The rate recovered 0.8 points in the six months before Trump took office, and has gone up another 1.6 points since then, reaching 65.3% in the first quarter of 2020, the most recent Census Bureau figure available.

But that’s still 3.9 points below the peak level of 16 years earlier.

Trade

(Note: These figures reflect an “annual revision” made by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on June 4, which changed historic trade figures going as far back as 1999, in some years by more than 2%.)

The trade deficit that Trump promised to reduce grew larger instead, but now is headed down.

The most recent government figures show that the total U.S. trade deficit in goods and services during the most recent 12 months on record (ending in May) was nearly $555 billion, an increase of 15.3% over the deficit for 2016.

The deficit seemed to stabilize in 2019, falling 0.5% compared with the previous year, after rising 11.4% in 2018 and 6.3% in 2017, Trump’s first year in office.

The decline in the deficit has continued into 2020, falling 9.1% during the first five months of the year, compared with the same period a year earlier. That’s partly due to the new coronavirus that emerged in China in December, leading to massive disruption of China’s production and a big drop in U.S. imports of Chinese goods.

China — The goods-and-services trade deficit with China has finally grown smaller under Trump.

Trump began a full-scale trade conflict with China in early 2018. At first the trade gap with China continued to go up, but that turned around in 2019, when the US-China trade gap went down 19% compared with the previous year. During the most recent 12 months on record (ending in March), the gap was 10.9% lower than the year before Trump took office, according to BEA’s newly revised figures.

The trade war continues. Trump signed a “phase one” trade deal with China on Jan. 15, under which the U.S. held off on new tariffs while China promised to buy more U.S. agricultural goods. But by June China was reported to be going back on that deal. China also has yet to agree to reduce subsidies to exporting businesses or to limit its demands that U.S. businesses share their intellectual property.

Mexico — Meanwhile the much smaller trade deficit in goods and services with Mexico has grown much faster than the global trade gap. It totaled $108 billion during the most recent 12 months, an increase of 68% compared with 2016. 

Canada — The trade surplus that the U.S. runs with Canada has turned into a deficit. In 2016, the U.S. sold nearly $10.9 billion more to Canada in goods and services than Canada bought from the U.S. That flipped last year, when the U.S. imported $2.7 billion more from Canada than the other way around. For the most recent 12 months on record the gap widened to $6.5 billion.

On March 13, Canada gave final legislative approval of a new trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico, to replace the 26-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump had promised to scrap during his campaign. The agreement finally took full effect July 1.

Health Insurance Coverage

The number of people who have no health insurance rose by at least 2 million under Trump.

The most recent figures come from the National Health Interview Survey, which on May 28 put the number of people who lacked coverage in the first six months of 2019 at 30.7 million — an increase of 2.1 million since 2016, the year before Trump took office.

The latest NHIS figures are still preliminary and subject to final data editing and final weighting. The 2019 figures also are the first produced using a questionnaire that was redesigned to improve measurement and reduce the burden on respondents, so may not be strictly comparable to figures from prior years.

The most recent NHIS survey is, however, in general agreement with figures reported by the Census Bureau last year, which showed an increase in the number of uninsured of 1.9 million between 2018 and 2017 — the first time in a decade that this number increased.

Census used a new “improved” method to estimate the uninsured population in 2017 and 2018, and said these figures shouldn’t be compared with estimates produced in 2016 and earlier years.

A much greater rise was reported by a Gallup survey covering the final quarter of 2018. Gallup, on Jan. 23, 2019, put the rise in uninsured adults at about 7 million, compared with the last half of 2016. For details, see our Feb. 12 story, “Did the Uninsured Increase by 7 Million?“

Trump failed to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act as he promised to do, but did slash advertising and outreach aimed at enrolling people in Obamacare plans. In December 2017, he signed a tax bill that ended the ACA’s tax penalty for people who fail to obtain coverage, effective last year. In March 2019, the Trump administration joined an effort by GOP state attorneys general seeking a court decision to overturn the entire act. And on June 25 the administration formally asked the Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare.

Food Stamps

The number of food stamp recipients dropped to the lowest levels in a decade — but is rising again since the COVID-19 recession hit.

Early last year, the number dropped below 38 million for the first time since October 2009, when millions were signing up for benefits in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

The decline continued until February, when the number dipped just below 36.9 million before turning upward as millions lost their jobs. In March, the number of people receiving food stamps rose by nearly 480,000.

As of that month, the most recent on record, the number of food stamp recipients was 37.3 million — or 12.6% below where it stood when Trump took office.

Before millions were thrown out of work in the COVID-19 recession, the administration was working to reduce the number further. For example, it finalized a new rule tightening work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents, estimated to make 688,000 fewer people eligible for benefits in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, according to the Department of Agriculture’s regulatory analysis.

But now it has reversed course. On March 18 the president signed a bipartisan emergency relief bill that (among other things) both suspended the new work requirement rule temporarily and also made families eligible for food stamps if their children had received free or reduced cost meals at schools that are now closed.

Currently the administration is giving states fistfuls of waivers, loosening rules to make it easier to obtain and use food stamps. It is also rolling out a pilot program — in 40 states so far — that allows use of food stamps to make online grocery purchases at Walmart, Amazon and a few others.

Judiciary Appointments

Trump is putting his mark on the federal appeals courts more quickly than Obama was able to do in his time in office.

Supreme Court — So far, Trump has won Senate confirmation for two Supreme Court nominees, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Obama also was able to fill two high court vacancies during his first two years in office, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan.

Court of Appeals — Trump also won confirmation of 53 U.S. Court of Appeals judges (30 during his first two years and another 23 in 2019 and so far in 2020). That’s far more than the total for Obama, who won confirmation for 30 as of the same point in his first term (16 during his first two years and 14 more in 2011 and through this date in 2012). 

Trump has now installed nearly 30% of all the 179 appellate court judges authorized by federal law.

District Court — Trump also outpaced Obama on filling lower courts, though by a smaller margin. So far, Trump has won confirmation for 144 of his nominees to be federal District Court judges. That’s over 21% of the 677 authorized district judges. Obama had won confirmation for 125 at the same point in his presidency.   

Trump also has filled five seats on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which has nationwide jurisdiction over lawsuits seeking money from the government. And he has filled two seats on the U.S. Court for International Trade. Obama filled none to either court during his first term.

Trump must share responsibility for this record with the Republican majority in the Senate. Republicans not only refused to consider Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy eventually filled by Gorsuch, but they also blocked confirmation of dozens of Obama’s nominees to lower courts. Trump inherited 17 Court of Appeals vacancies, for example, including seven that had Obama nominees pending but never confirmed.

Federal Debt and Deficits

The federal debt has increased by over $6.1 trillion under Trump. And the rise is continuing as the government borrows frantically to fund emergency COVID-19 spending.

The federal debt held by the public stood at over $20.5 trillion at the last count on July 14 — 42.6% higher than on the day he took office.

The figure is certain to rise as tax revenues fall due to the partial shutdown of the economy, and spending ramps up to aid jobless workers and shuttered businesses.

But even before the COVID-19 emergency, Trump’s cuts in corporate and individual income tax rates — as well as bipartisan spending deals he signed in 2018 and 2019 — caused the red ink to gush faster than it did before. 

The federal government’s annual deficit hit $984 billion in fiscal year 2019, which ended Sept. 30 last year. And the deficit has soared to $2.7 trillion during the first nine months of the current fiscal year.

The debt at the end of 2019 was equal to about 79% of the nation’s entire gross domestic product. But with the economy shrinking and the debt soaring, the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget estimated on July 2 (working from CBO data) that the debt will exceed the size of the economy this year, and swell to 121% of total economic output by 2030.

The post Trump’s Numbers July 2020 Update appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Editor’s Note: This update reflects only a small part of the huge economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused millions of layoffs and shut down much of the economy before many of these statistics were collected.

Summary

Since Donald Trump took office as president, but mostly before the COVID-19 emergency:

• The economy grew more slowly than Trump promised, most recently at 2.3% last year.
• Nearly 6.2 million jobs were added — just before nearly 17 million workers filed for unemployment insurance.
• The federal debt grew $3.8 trillion larger; annual deficits accelerated.
• Carbon dioxide emissions fell 0.6% while 1,100 coal-mining jobs were lost.
• Paychecks grew 3.4% after inflation.
• The number of people lacking health insurance rose by nearly 2 million.
• Crime decreased; handgun production fell 18.5%.
• Trump appointees filled nearly 29% of all federal appeals court judgeships.
• U.S. oil production rose 38.9%; the nation at last began pumping more oil that it consumed.

Analysis

This is our ninth quarterly update of the “Trump’s Numbers” scorecard that we posted in January 2018 and have updated every three months, most recently on Jan. 20. We’ll publish additional updates every three months, as fresh statistics become available.

Here we’ve included statistics that may seem good or bad or just neutral, depending on the reader’s point of view. That’s the way we did it when we posted our first “Obama’s Numbers” article more than seven years ago — and in the quarterly updates and final summary that followed. And we’ve maintained the same practice under Trump. 

Then as now, we make no judgment as to how much credit or blame any president deserves for things that happen during his time in office. Opinions differ on that.

Jobs and Unemployment

Job growth slowed a bit under Trump — then sharply reversed as the COVID-19 crisis led to mass unemployment.

Employment — Jobs are now being lost by the millions as businesses shut down to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

Only the first jolt from this ongoing economic cataclysm is captured in the most recent employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, however. They show that after nine years and five months of constant monthly gains, 701,000 jobs disappeared between mid-February and mid-March, the period covered by the report.

As of that latest report, a total of 6,159,000 jobs had been added since Trump took office, an increase of 4.2%. 

But all those gains are certain to be wiped out in the next monthly employment report due to be published May 8. Since the period covered by the most recent report, which covered people on payrolls as of March 12, a total of nearly 16.8 million workers filed new claims for unemployment insurance in the three weeks ending April 4.

Even in February, when employment was at its highest, Trump was far behind the pace needed to fulfill his campaign boast that he would be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” Up until then, the average monthly gain under Trump had been 185,000, while the average monthly gain during the four years before he took office was 216,000.

Unemployment — The unemployment rate is on the rise again after falling at times to the lowest rate in nearly half a century.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the rate at 4.7% when he was sworn in — well below the historical norm of 5.6%, which was the median monthly rate from 1948 to the start of Trump’s term.

The most recent rate, as of mid-March, was 4.4%.

In February it had been 3.5%, and was also at that level in September, November and December last year. Before then, it had not been so low since December 1969 — 50 years earlier — when it was also 3.5%.

There is no question that the next report will show a much higher rate. The Congressional Budget Office, for one, predicted the rate would top 10% in the second quarter of 2020.

Job Openings — Before the COVID-19 shock, a shortage of qualified workers was holding back hiring.

As of the last business day of February, the most recent figure on record, the number of unfilled job openings stood at 6.8 million. At that point the number had grown 1.3 million  — or 22.7% — since Trump took office.

The number has been as high as 7.5 million as recently as January 2019, which was the highest in the 19 years the BLS has tracked this figure.

The number of unfilled jobs has exceeded the number of unemployed people looking for work every month since March 2018. In late February — two weeks before the White House declared a COVID-19 emergency — there were nearly 1.1 million more job openings than there were people seeking jobs.

Labor Force Participation — The labor force participation rate — which went down 2.9 percentage points during the Obama years — slipped a bit further under Trump.

The labor force participation rate is the portion of the entire civilian population age 16 and older that is either employed or currently looking for work in the last four weeks. Republicans often criticized Obama for the decline during his time, even though it was due mostly to the post-World War II baby boomers reaching retirement age, and other demographic factors beyond the control of any president.

The rate stood at 62.8% when Trump took office, and in February that rate had climbed to 63.4%, a gain of 0.6 percentage point. But all that was lost in March as the COVID-19 emergency caused many to simply leave the workforce entirely, and the rate dropped to 62.7%, or 0.1 percentage point below the rate Trump inherited.

Manufacturing Jobs —  Manufacturing jobs increased since Trump took office, but had begun to decline even before the virus crisis began to force a wave of plant closings.

Overall, the number was up by 470,000 under Trump as of the latest report, covering pay periods that included March 12. That followed a net decrease of 192,000 under Obama.

But that’s down a bit from the peak gain of 499,000, as of mid-November last year. And the number of manufacturing jobs in March was still 907,000 below where it was in December 2007, at the start of the Great Recession.

Economic Growth

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. economy was growing a bit faster under Trump  — but not nearly as fast as he promised.

Real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product grew 2.3% last year. During all of Trump’s first three years the economy grew 0.6% more than in the three years just before he took office.

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, growth under Trump had averaged far less than the 4% to 6% per year that he promised repeatedly, both when he was a candidate and also as president. The best annual growth achieved during Trump’s time was 2.9% in 2018 — no better than the 2.9% growth in 2015, the best year during Obama’s time.

Now there’s general agreement that growth halted — and the economy started shrinking —  in February, as government officials ordered thousands of business closings to slow the spread of the deadly new coronavirus. International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva, for one, said April 3 that the world economy had come to “a standstill” for the first time since the IMF was created in 1945, and added: “It is way worse than the global financial crisis” of 2008-2009.

But the first official estimate of real GDP growth in the first three months of 2020 won’t be released until April 29.

Income and Poverty

Household Income — Household income has risen briskly during the Trump administration.

The Census Bureau’s measure of median household income reached $63,179 in 2018, an increase of $1,400 from 2016 after adjusting for inflation.

In percentage terms, the increase during Trump’s first two years is 2.3%. (The median figure represents the midpoint — half of all households earned more, half less.)

The official figure is the highest ever recorded, exceeding previous records set in 2016 and 2017. But Census officials said those recent “records” are all due in part to a change in the survey questions in 2014. Starting then, the annual survey has picked up some sources of income that were previously missed.

Adjusting for that factor, and also for a change in the way Census processed data starting last year, Census officials published “estimated adjusted” figures showing what median household income would have been for past years, had the current questionnaire and processing procedures been in place. On that basis, the latest figure is just a few dollars less than it was in 1999 — $63,231.

The “estimated adjusted” figures also show an even greater increase during Trump’s first two years than the official figures, because the new data processing procedures had the effect of holding down income by a fraction of a percentage point. On an adjusted basis, the increase under Trump would be $1,638, or 2.7%.

Poverty — As incomes rose, the rate of poverty declined. The percentage of Americans living with income below the official poverty line went down to 11.8% of the population in 2018, the lowest level since 2001.

The poverty rate has now declined for four consecutive years, dropping by 1.3 percentage points in 2015, by 0.8 points in 2016 and by 0.4 points and 0.5 points in Trump’s first two years.

Regulations

The growth of federal regulation has stopped under Trump.

The number of restrictive words and phrases (such as “shall,” “prohibited” or “may not”) contained in the Code of Federal Regulations stayed below 1.08 million for most of last year — a little below where it was when Trump took office. As of April 3, the count had crept up to a little above 1.08 million — an increase of 1,286 (or 0.1%) since Trump’s inauguration.

That the number has barely changed is a big departure from the past, when restrictions grew at an average of 1.5% per year during both the Obama years and the George W. Bush years, according to annual QuantGov tracking.

The Mercatus count of restrictions doesn’t attempt to assess the cost or benefit of any particular rule — such assessments require a degree of guesswork and are sensitive to assumptions. But it does track the sheer volume of federal rules with more precision than we have found in other metrics.

Some of the recent changes are just clearing deadwood. In 2018, for example, the Treasury Department scrapped an entire chapter of zombie-like regulations issued by the old Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversaw the savings-and-loan industry before being abolished in 2011. S&Ls have since fallen under other federal banking regulators, but the obsolete OTS rules remained on the books.

However, many of the rules Trump has eliminated are quite significant. For example, in what it called “the largest deregulatory initiative of this administration,” it issued a final rule that nullifies Obama-era fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks. The administration said that instead of commanding automakers to achieve average mileage of 46.7 miles per gallon by the year 2025, the Trump rule will require them to achieve only an average of 40.4 mpg.

Another example: Last September, the EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule took effect, repealing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan rule. The Obama-era rule was designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by shifting away from coal as an energy source and would have required states to meet specific emissions reductions.

Crime

Crime declined since Trump took office.

The FBI’s annual Crime in the United States report, released Sept. 30, showed the number of murders declined 6.9% during Trump’s first two years in office.

And the decline continued into the first half of last, according to the FBI’s preliminary semiannual report released Jan. 21. The FBI tallied 3.9% fewer murders during the first half of 2019 than in the same period in 2018.

The murder rate per 100,000 people went down to 5.0 in 2018, still well above the record low set in 2014, when it was 4.4. The FBI doesn’t calculate rates in its semiannual reports, so the rate for 2019 won’t be known until full-year figures are released, which usually happens in September.

As a candidate, Trump repeatedly claimed that the murder rate was “the highest it’s been in 45 years.” That was far from true. The rate did rise during Obama’s final two years, to 5.4 per 100,000 in 2016. But the highest rate in the past half century was 10.2 in 1980.

The number of violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) went down 3.5% between 2016 and 2018, and dropped another 3.1% in the first six months of 2019, compared with the same period a year earlier.

The number of property crimes (burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft) went down 9.2% during Trump’s first two years, and declined another 5.6% in the first half of last year, compared to the same six months a year earlier.

Guns

Sales and production of guns pulled back since Trump became president, after surging to record levels during the Obama years.

Handgun Production — In 2018, annual production of pistols and revolvers in the U.S. totaled over 4.5 million, according to final figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

That represented a decline of 18.5% from 2016, when production surged to a record level of nearly 5.6 million.

Handgun production more than tripled during the Obama years. So the 2018 level was still 150% higher than it had been in 2008, the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency.

Gun Sales —  Gun sales also dropped a little — but, recently, COVID-19 concerns set off a new wave of buying.

The government doesn’t collect figures on sales of guns. But the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the gun industry’s trade group — tracks approximate sales figures by adjusting FBI statistics on background checks to remove those not related to actual sales, such as checks required for concealed-carry permits.

Those NSSF-adjusted figures dropped from a record 15.7 million in Obama’s final year to 14.6 million during the most recent 12 months ending in March — a decrease of 6.8%.

But people were flocking to gun stores during the first three months of this year, when adjusted background checks hit 4.8 million, a rise of 42% compared with the same period a year earlier. March alone saw an 80% increase over the same month in 2019. Numerous news accounts attributed the rush to buy guns to fears that the spread of the coronavirus would lead to social unrest.

These figures cover rifles and shotguns and previously owned weapons, as well as new handguns. They are only an approximation of actual sales, since some of these checks cover purchases of multiple weapons, and of course some sales still occur without background checks.

Coal and Environment

Coal Mining Jobs — As a candidate, Trump promised to “put our [coal] miners back to work,” but he hasn’t.

As of March, there were 1,100 fewer coal mining jobs than when Trump took office, according to BLS figures. That’s a decline of 2.2%.

The coronavirus pandemic may have hastened some of the losses, but, in fact, nearly 600 mining jobs were lost as early as September — long before the virus appeared in China — when two Wyoming mines closed and the owner filed for bankruptcy protection. And Moody’s Investor Services said it had been predicting a 15% to 20% decline in U.S. coal production this year even before the virus hit.

U.S. coal production last year was the lowest in 41 years. During the 12 months ending in February (the most recent month for which figures are available), the Energy Information Administration estimated that 685 million short tons were produced, which is 5.9% below the figure for 2016.

The outlook for coal miners has gotten even more bleak since our last report. In April, EIA predicted that coal production would fall 22% in 2020, in part due to coal mines closed by the COVID-19 disease, and lower demand for coal-generated electricity during a virus-induced world economic slump.

Carbon Emissions —  Carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption declined under Trump, continuing a long downward trend that started years before he took office.

Figures from EIA show CO2 emissions were 0.6% lower in 2019 than they were in 2016.

In the decade before Trump took office, emissions fell by a total of 14%, due mainly to electric utilities shifting away from coal-fired plants in favor of cheaper, cleaner natural gas, as well as solar and wind power. Under Trump, the trend reversed with a temporary 2.9% increase in 2018.

But that year was an anomaly. A hotter than normal summer and colder than normal winter resulted in higher natural gas consumption. And an even bigger anomaly is predicted this year — in the opposite direction.

EIA is currently estimating that CO2 emissions fell 2.7% in 2019, and predicted they “will decrease by 7.5% in 2020 as the result of the slowing economy and restrictions on business and travel activity related to COVID-19.”

Border Security

Illegal border crossings have subsided after surging last year to the highest in a dozen years. But they are still running higher under Trump than before he took office.

Last year, a monthly average of 66,400 people were apprehended attempting to illegally enter the U.S. at the border with Mexico, the highest level since 2007.

The peak month was May, which saw 132,856 apprehensions, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics. That was the highest total since March 2006, when the monthly total hit nearly 161,000.

During the first three months of 2020, the average has gone down to 29,743 per month.  

Attempted border crossings tend to be highest in March, April and May and lowest in December. So to even out that seasonal factor, 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, apprehensions totaled 681,209, an increase of 53.8% over 2016, when the total was 442,940.

Another way to take seasonality into account is to compare the most recent three months with the same period in 2016. By that measure, which ignores the worst of last year’s surge, apprehensions in January, February and March of this year were still 7.3% higher than in the same months of 2016.

Corporate Profits

After-tax corporate profits remained near record levels during Trump’s presidency. During 2019, they hit $1.85 trillion for the year (see line 45), just under the record $1.86 trillion recorded for 2014.

The most recent year’s figure is 6.3% higher than the full-year figure for 2016, the year before Trump’s inauguration.

Stock Market

The stock market topped a decade-long bull market with new records in early 2020 — until the bottom dropped out in March as the COVID-19 emergency forced businesses to close and lay off millions of workers.

After weeks of wild swings up and down (mostly down) roughly half the gains of the Trump years were erased.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock average closed most recently on April 9 at 23.2% above where it has been the day before Trump was inaugurated. At our previous update three months ago the gain had been 47.1% 

Other indexes took similar rides. At the April 9 close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, was up 20.2% during Trump’s time in office.  As of our January update it had been up 48.7%.

And the NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies, was up 47.2% under Trump on April 10, compared with a 69.5% gain at our January update.

Wages and Inflation

The upward trend in real wages continued under Trump, and inflation remained in check.

CPI — The Consumer Price Index rose 5.8% during Trump’s first 38 months, continuing a long period of historically low inflation.

In the most recent 12 months, ending in March, the CPI rose only 1.5% — held down in part by a recent plunge in gasoline prices. The CPI rose an average of 1.8% each year of the Obama presidency (measured as the 12-month change ending each January), and an average of 2.4% during each of the George W. Bush years.

Wages — Paychecks continued to grow faster than prices.

The average weekly earnings of all private-sector workers, in “real” (inflation-adjusted) terms, rose 3.4% during Trump’s first 38 months (ending in March).

Those figures include managers and supervisors. Rank-and-file production and nonsupervisory workers (82% of all workers) are doing just a bit better than their bosses. Real earnings for them have gone up 3.8% so far under Trump.

Those gains extend a long trend. Real wages took a dive during the Great Recession of 2007-2009, but have been rising now since hitting a low point in July 2008. During the Obama years, real weekly earnings rose 4.1% for all workers, and 4.2% for rank-and-file.

Consumer Sentiment

Consumer confidence in the economy, which at first rose under Trump, plunged to the lowest point in 19 years when the COVID-19 emergency hit.

The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers monthly index first soared to a peak of 101.4 in March 2018, which was the highest in 14 years. It was still at 101.0 as recently as February.

But in March and early April, it took the worst plunge ever recorded, to a preliminary figure of 71.0. That was the lowest since December 2011, when the nation was struggling to recover from the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

Even so, the survey’s chief economist, Richard Curtin, said consumers may still be too optimistic. “Sharp additional declines may occur when consumers adjust their views to a slower expected pace of the economic recovery,” he wrote.

The preliminary April figure, released April 9, was 16.2 points below where it was in October 2016, just before Trump was elected after promising to boost economic growth.

Home Prices and Ownership

Home Prices — Home prices soared to record levels during Trump’s tenure.

The national median price of an existing, single-family home set a record high of $288,500 in June 2019, according to sales figures from the National Association of Realtors.

Prices have moderated a bit since then, but still stood at $272,400 in February, the most recent monthly figure available. That is $43,700 higher than the median price of $228,700 for homes sold during the month Trump took office — a gain in value of 19.1%. The rise in the Consumer Price Index during the same period was 6.3%.

The Realtors’ figures reflect raw sales prices without attempting to adjust for such factors as variations in the size, location, age or condition of the homes sold in a given month or year. Even so, a similar pattern emerges from the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which compares sales prices of similar homes and seeks to measure changes in the total value of all existing single-family housing stock.

The Case-Shiller index for January sales (the most recent available) was at a record high — and 15.0% above where it stood in the month Trump took office. 

Whichever way you measure it, homeowners have seen the value of their houses rise substantially since Trump became president.

Homeownership — The percentage of Americans who own their homes has continued to recover under Trump.

Back in 2004, the homeownership rate hit a record 69.2% of households for two quarters, but then began a years-long slide, hitting bottom in the second quarter of 2016 at 62.9%. That was the lowest point in more than half a century, and tied for the lowest on record.

The rate recovered 0.8 points in the six months before Trump took office, and has gone up another 1.5 points since then, reaching 65.1% in the fourth quarter of last year, the most recent Census Bureau figure available.

But that’s still 4.1 points below the peak level of 15 years earlier.

Trade

The trade deficit that Trump promised to reduce grew larger instead, but now is headed down.

The most recent government figures show that the total U.S. trade deficit in goods and services during the most recent 12 months on record (ending in February) was just under $597 billion, an increase of 18.7% over the deficit for 2016.

However, the deficit stabilized last year, falling 1.8% in 2019 after rising 12.4% in 2018 and 8.6% in 2017, Trump’s first year in office.

The decline in the deficit has accelerated since our last report, falling 12.2% in February alone. That’s partly due to the new coronavirus that emerged in China in December, leading to massive disruption of China’s production and a big drop in U.S. imports of Chinese goods.

China — The goods-and-services trade deficit with China has finally grown a tiny bit smaller under Trump.

Trump began a full-scale trade conflict with China in early 2018. At first the trade gap with China continued to go up, but that turned around in 2019. Last year, the goods-and-services trade deficit with China was 0.4% less than in 2016, the latest figures show.

The trade war continues. Trump signed a “phase one” trade deal with China on Jan. 15, under which the U.S. held off on new tariffs while China promised to buy more U.S. agricultural goods. But the big issues aren’t settled. China has yet to agree to reduce subsidies to exporting businesses or to limit its demands that U.S. businesses share their intellectual property.

Mexico — Meanwhile the much smaller trade deficit in goods and services with Mexico has grown much faster than the global trade gap. It totaled $101 billion during 2019, an increase of 63% compared with 2016. 

Canada — The trade surplus that the U.S. runs with Canada has turned into a deficit. In 2016, the U.S. sold nearly $7.5 billion more to Canada in goods and services than it bought from the U.S. That flipped last year, when the U.S. imported $5.3 billion more from Canada than the other way around.

On March 13, Canada gave final legislative approval of a new trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico, to replace the 26-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump had promised to scrap during his campaign. The new agreement will be called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. It will take effect after all three countries work out implementing regulations.

Health Insurance Coverage

The number of people lacking health insurance rose by nearly 2 million under Trump.

The Census Bureau reported Sept. 10 that the number of Americans who lacked health insurance for all of 2018 was 27.5 million — up from 25.6 million in 2017. That’s an increase of 1.9 million.

It was the first time in a decade that this number increased. The percentage of Americans without coverage for the entire year rose to 8.5%, from 7.9% the year before.

(A technical note: Normally we would compare the most recent figures with those from 2016, before Trump took office. But last year Census used a new “improved” method to estimate the uninsured population in 2017 and 2018, and said these figures shouldn’t be compared with estimates produced in earlier years.)

The Census report confirmed a trend we’ve been tracking using a somewhat different measure released on a more frequent and timely basis by the National Health Interview Survey. The NHIS put the number of people who lacked coverage at the time they were interviewed — not necessarily for the entire year — at 30.4 million in 2018, an increase of 1.8 million over 2016.

The NHIS said 9.4% of the population lacked coverage at the time of interview in 2018, up from 9% in 2016.

A much greater rise was reported by a Gallup survey covering the final quarter of 2018. Gallup, on Jan. 23, 2019, put the rise in uninsured adults at about 7 million, compared with the last half of 2016. Gallup put the percentage of uninsured adults at 13.7% in the October-December quarter. For details, see our Feb. 12 story, “Did the Uninsured Increase by 7 Million?“

Trump failed to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act as he promised to do, but did slash advertising and outreach aimed at enrolling people in Obamacare plans. In December 2017, he signed a tax bill that ended the ACA’s tax penalty for people who fail to obtain coverage, effective last year.  In March 2019, the Trump administration joined an effort by GOP state attorneys general seeking a court decision to overturn the entire act. On March 2 the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and could hear arguments on it later this year.

Food Stamps 

The number of food stamp recipients dropped to the lowest levels in a decade.

Early last year, the number dropped below 38 million for the first time since October 2009, when millions were signing up for benefits in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

As of January, the most recent month for which figures are available, 37.1 million people were receiving the aid. 

The number of food stamp recipients has gone down 5.6 million, or 13.1%, since January 2017, when Trump took office.

The number of recipients is now 10.7 million below the peak month of December 2012. But it is still 9.7 million above where it was at the start of the Great Recession, in December 2007, despite years of an improving economy.

Before millions were thrown out of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration was working to reduce the number further. On April 1 a new rule would have taken effect tightening work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents. That would have caused 688,000 fewer people to be eligible for benefits in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, according to the Department of Agriculture’s regulatory analysis.

But on March 18 the president signed a bipartisan emergency relief bill that (among other things) both suspended the new work requirement rule temporarily and also made families eligible for food stamps if their children had received free or reduced cost meals at schools that are now closed.

And last July, the Trump administration proposed another rule that it said could remove another 3 million people from the rolls. That rule would take away flexibility that many states now use to grant food aid to people with income or assets exceeding federal limits.

Judiciary Appointments 

Trump is putting his mark on the federal appeals courts more quickly than Obama was able to do in his time in office.

Supreme Court — So far, Trump has won Senate confirmation for two Supreme Court nominees, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Obama also was able to fill two high court vacancies during his first two years in office, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan.

Court of Appeals — Trump also won confirmation of 52 U.S. Court of Appeals judges (30 during his first two years and another 22 in 2019 and so far in 2020). That’s nearly double the total for Obama, who won confirmation for 27 as of the same point in his first term (16 during his first two years and 11 more in 2011 and early 2012). 

Trump has now installed 29% of all the 179 appellate court judges authorized by federal law.

District Court — Trump also outpaced Obama on filling lower courts. So far, Trump has won confirmation for 139 of his nominees to be federal District Court judges. That’s nearly 21% of the 677 authorized district judges. Obama had won confirmation for 111 at the same point in his presidency.   

Trump also has filled five seats on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which has nationwide jurisdiction over lawsuits seeking money from the government. And he has filled two seats on the U.S. Court for International Trade. Obama filled none to either court during his first term.

Trump must share responsibility for this record with the Republican majority in the Senate. Republicans not only refused to consider Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy eventually filled by Gorsuch, but they also blocked confirmation of dozens of Obama’s nominees to lower courts. Trump inherited 17 Court of Appeals vacancies, for example, including seven that had Obama nominees pending but never confirmed.

Federal Debt and Deficits

The federal debt has increased by $3.8 trillion under Trump. And the rise is accelerating as the government borrows frantically to fund emergency COVID-19 spending.

The federal debt held by the public stood at just over $18.2 trillion at the last count on April 9 — 26.6% higher than on the day he took office.

The figure likely will continue to surge at an unprecedented rate in months to come as tax revenues fall due to the shutdown of the economy, and spending ramps up to aid jobless workers and shuttered businesses.

But even before the COVID-19 emergency, Trump’s cuts in corporate and individual income tax rates — as well as bipartisan spending deals he signed in 2018 and 2019 — caused the red ink to gush even faster than it did before. 

The federal government’s annual deficit hit $984 billion in fiscal year 2019, which ended Sept. 30 last year. 

CBO’s most recent budget projections, issued March 19, estimated that annual deficits would be nearly $1.1 trillion in the current fiscal year and grow to nearly $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2030. But that didn’t account for trillions in new spending Congress has since approved to meet the coronavirus emergency. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that “actual deficits could ultimately end up being twice as high” as CBO estimated.

The debt at the end of 2019 was equal to about 79% of the nation’s entire gross domestic product. CBO said March 12 that the debt was already on track to hit 98% of GDP by 2030, and now it’s sure to rise even faster.

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