Check these pix/ figures: they show the so-called “historic” advance in unemployment, and jobs, turns out to be a simple extension of trendlines, from the Presidency of 44. The chart images show the story, far better than words do.
And, what 45 boosters want to take credit for is really the great continuation of a multi-year trend from the Obama era, since 2010.
For starters, here’s the civilian Unemployment rate, December-to-December (plus the most recent month, through May).
As you can see, the Unemployment rate plummeted from 9.9% in December 2009, to 4.7% during Obama’s last full month in office — falling a full 5 points from the recession at the start of his presidency.
In the next 12 months in Trump’s first year, unemployment fell from 4.7% to 4.1%, and continues these gains through the first quarter.
At 3.8%, the rate matches the low of April 2000 during the Bill Clinton presidency.
You can see the Change from year to year; it’s here:
The change in unemployment is no faster under Trump than it was under President Obama.
Now here is the Unemployment rate for Blacks / African-Americans, below. (Figures are December-to-December, and the most recent month, May).
Unemployment for Blacks, under Obama, was sliced in half from early in his term, from 16% at the end of the first year of his presidency, at the end of the 2008-2009 recession, to under 8% by the last month of 2016.
Here is the percentage-point change, from year to year, in black unemployment, below. As you can see, the drops are not sharper since Trump took office.
The trend reduction in unemployment of the last several years is continuing.
Here are the numbers of new jobs created.
The chart shows change from year ago.
During the Obama recovery, the average year-to-year gain from December to December was 2,262,000 employees per year, or 2,427,000 per year after 2010 on average, from 2011 to 2016. At the end of Trump’s first year: 2,163,000.
The US economy is beneficiary of an expansionary record that has solidified through the last 7 to 8 years.
In the key Manufacturing sector, the Obama presidency turned around the slippage in manufacturing jobs. See below.
A precipitous slide in blue-collar jobs since 1980 had accelerated in the decade from 2000 to 2010, when the economy gave up 6 million manufacturing positions. Since 2010, the U.S. succeeded in adding nearly 1 million jobs in manufacturing industries through 2016. Through 2016 it was the first sustained upturn in Mfg. jobs since the mid-1990s. Jobs in manufacturing grew to 12.4 million workers at the end of 2016, up from its bottom of 11.5 million in 2010. The upward trajectory of manufacturing jobs is continuing under Trump.
Furthermore, during a mature, long-in-the-tooth recovery (eight years old, since 2010), the attempt to goose an aging expansion, using a debt-infused tax cut that is front-loaded and skewed toward certain income classes and regions, is a hazardous pro-cyclical fiscal move.
Tax and spending policy is supposed to be counter-cyclical. The stimulus would be needed when the economy tanks.
If you’ve blown the bundle of cash when the economy is chugging along, the resource will have been spent ahead of the time when it would be desperately needed. It is a feel-good-now, pay-for-it-later strategy. Will you be easily fooled?
[Note: This is an update of diary published in May, with one additional month’s data added now, and expansion of info with a new chart to cover the Manufacturing upturn. Main point — you can’t say if you’re born on 3rd base that you’ve hit a home run. This is a long-running expansion, and it’s being ballyhoo’ed now.]