At Tuesday night’s debate (and doesn’t Tuesday seem like a lot more than three days ago?), Joe Biden laid down some truth about The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote’s record on jobs. The former vice president told the American people that Trump is “going to be the first president of the United States to leave office, having fewer jobs in his administration than when he became president. Fewer jobs than when he became president. First one in American history.”
That’s some economic record for (someone who played) a big-time businessman (on TV).
Trump’s first 44 months are historically awful, reflecting his presidency overall.
The Washington Post fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, dissected the data on jobs created under each president, and included the September jobs report released today. The U.S. has only been tabulating such data since 1945, so we can compare the records of the previous 13 presidents, starting with Harry Truman.
We can look at the raw numbers of jobs created, or at the number of jobs as a percentage of the population—which is more accurate because it takes population growth into account. The first way puts Bill Clinton at the top of the heap, with over 22 million jobs created. The second sees Truman leading the way, with an increase in jobs of 22% of the population. With either measure, two things are true: Democratic presidents dominate the top of the list, and the bottom five spots are held down by Republicans—with Trump always bringing up the very rear.
Today’s jobs report, in case you were wondering, didn’t change the reality of what Biden said on Tuesday. Job creation in September came in well below expectations (661,000 jobs created versus 859,000 expected). As a reminder, the economy lost 22 million jobs in March and April. Including the September jobs report, we’ve only gained back half of those. In other words, more than 10 million of those jobs have not returned.
Trump would say that it’s not fair to blame him for a recession caused by COVID-19 (never mind his responsibility—despite his denials thereof—for making COVID-19, and thus the recession, far worse in the U.S. than it needed to be). In fact, it was only in January that he was bragging about our economy being “the greatest in the history of our country.” Did I say bragging? Sorry, I meant lying.
February 2020 represents Trump’s high point on jobs. So, painting his record in the best possible light by pretending COVID-19 never happened, how exactly did he do? Even the pace he had achieved to that point would only have put him in the middle of the pack, right around the same level as President Obama—who inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression and handed Trump an already strong level of job creation. In other words, even before COVID-19, Trump’s jobs record was meh.
But you know what, COVID-19 did happen, and 200,000-plus Americans have lost their lives. And it happened on Trump’s watch. Lives are more important than jobs of course. But jobs, and job creation, is one of the ways we can compare the economic performance of different presidents. Trump has lied about his record on jobs and the economy (and on everything else as well).
Just like Biden said, the American economy will have fewer jobs at the end of Trump’s presidency than when it started—at least that will be true as long as we do everything we can to ensure that presidency comes to an end after one term.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)
