Donald Trump used his social media platform on Sunday to remind the public how impressed he was with his presidential record. As part of a series of odd and dubious claims, the Republican said his term was “a fantastic time for America,” in part because of “jobs, jobs, jobs.”
A day later, on Labor Day, his White House successor did something he rarely does: President Joe Biden took aim at Trump’s economic record. Reuters reported:
U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday took shots at his likely 2024 rival, Donald Trump, in a Labor Day speech aimed at shoring up support in Pennsylvania, a state he needs to win next year to retain the White House. A self-described champion of labor unions, Biden addressed union workers in Philadelphia as he sought to explain his economic policies to a public worried about the economy, despite easing inflation and low unemployment levels.
In remarks that sounded an awful lot like a general election campaign speech, the Democratic incumbent didn’t mention Trump by name, but he had plenty to say about the Republican’s record.
“This is one of the greatest job creation periods in American history. For real. That’s a fact,” Biden said. “And, you know, it wasn’t that long ago we were losing jobs in this country. In fact, the guy who held this job before me was just one of two presidents in history that left office with fewer jobs in America than when he got elected office. By the way, do you know who the other one was? Herbert Hoover.”
The president added, “When the last guy was here, you were shipping jobs to China. Now we’re bringing jobs home from China.”
The claim that Trump and Hoover are the only modern presidents who left office with fewer American jobs than when they started is technically true, though I’ve never cared for it. Biden’s point isn’t wrong, but it requires context: Trump’s totals on job creation include massive job losses from the spring of 2020 — due to Covid, the economy lost over 20 million jobs in April 2020 alone — which throws off the overall tally for the Republican’s term.
That said, the larger point has real merit: Perceptions that Trump’s tenure was a boom time for American job growth isn’t true, and Biden is right to focus attention on this.
When it comes to comparing the two leaders’ records, the former president and his allies will likely argue that Trump should only be evaluated by his first three years. In fact, Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow — who served as the director of the National Economic Council in Trump’s White House — used this approach on the air last month.
The trouble is, excluding 2020 from Trump’s totals doesn’t magically make his record look amazing.
Revisiting our earlier coverage, according to data from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy created roughly 6.4 million jobs during Trump’s first three years in office. (For the sake of convenience, I’m including January 2017 in this total, even though Trump was only president for the final third of the month.)
That’s not a bad total, though in the final three years of Barack Obama’s presidency, the U.S. economy created over 8 million jobs. How do Republicans explain the fact that job growth slowed after Trump took office? As a rule, the party doesn’t talk about this, and the former president hasn’t been asked.
Meanwhile, in the first 32 months of Biden’s term, the U.S. economy has created nearly 14 million jobs.
Yes, it’s true that much of this total reflects a post-pandemic economic recovery, but it’s also true that as 2021 got underway, few if any economists expected such rapid growth and an unemployment rate that fell this year to its lowest point since 1969.
All of which is to say, Biden has a strong story to tell; Trump’s “jobs, jobs, jobs” boast isn’t what it appears to be; and as Election Day 2024 approaches, voters should expect to hear a lot more about this.
