Donald Trump’s Inches Away From Losing His Historic Achievement

When Donald Trump left office in January 2021, the unemployment rate stood at 6.3 percent, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of the Labor Statistics (BLS). On Friday, the U.S. economy added nearly 200,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate ticking down to 3.7 percent, just a little over the pre-pandemic rate of 3.5 percent in February 2020.

The former president had presided over historically low unemployment rates at under 5 percent for the bulk of his presidency. But then COVID-19 hit and the pandemic-induced economic crisis led to millions of Americans losing their jobs as the U.S. economy locked down, with consumers forced to stay at home to stop the spread of the virus. The unemployment rate soared over a two month period and by April 2020 it spiked to nearly 15 percent, the highest in more than 70 years, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Trump, however, did witness the jobless rate fall to a little above 6 percent as he departed the White House and was succeeded by President Joe Biden.

Newsweek contacted the Trump campaign for comment on the jobs numbers released on Friday and the state of the economy via email on Friday.

With a little over a month left before the first primary votes of the 2024 presidential election are cast, polls suggest that Trump may emerge with the Republican nomination and once again face-off against Biden. The election may hinge on the state of the economy, with polls showing that the issue is atop the electorate’s minds.

Biden Claims Credit for Job Growth

Biden has claimed credit for jobs the economy has added since he took office in January 2021, amid an environment of elevated inflation that at one point hit 40-year highs on the back of consumer spending and stifled supply chains combining to push up prices.

The rise in prices sparked aggressive rate hikes by the Federal Reserve to slow the economy and arrest the jump in inflation. High rates have helped increase the cost of borrowing for things like housing and business investment, which some analysts projected might lead to a recession in 2023.

“The economy created 199,000 jobs in November, for a total of over 14 million jobs since I took office,” Biden said in a statement on Friday.

The president talked about the jobless rate being under 4 percent for close to two years and for inflation slowing to 3.2 percent in October, though still below the Fed’s target of 2 percent.

“Workers’ paychecks and household wealth are higher now than they were before the pandemic, after adjusting for inflation,” Biden said. “On my watch we have achieved better growth and lower inflation than any other advanced country. A year ago, forecasters said it couldn’t be done.”

A former White House official took to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to suggest that the Biden’s economic agenda was working.

“Another strong jobs report — as inflation continues to come down — is more evidence that the administration’s economic plan has worked better than nearly anyone expected,” Bharat Ramamurti, a former deputy director at the National Economic Council, said. “People looking to question the strength and resilience of the economy are running out of data to rely on.”

The jobs numbers come at a time when Americans are feeling uncertain about the economy and are worried about a potential slowdown. Voters have questioned Biden’s handling of the economy, with some polls showing that the electorate trust Trump more on the issue than the incumbent.

But a survey on Friday, showed that in 2024, consumers anticipate inflation to hit 3.1 percent down from 4.5 percent a month ago, the lowest level since March 2021, the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers said. The five year expectation also fell to under 3 percent from 3.2 percent last month.

The surveyors pointed out that consumers were closely thinking about the election and its impact on the economy.

“Sentiment for these consumers appears to incorporate expectations that the elections will likely yield results favorable to the economy,” Joanne Hsu, Surveys of Consumers Director, said in a statement.

A strong jobs numbers in November, may signal that the U.S. could avoid a recession, analysts say, and that the economy was on course for a soft landing, an environment where inflation moderated amid elevated interest rates without too much damage to the jobs market and the economy.

Joanie Bily, chief workforce analyst at industrial staffing firm Employbridge, told Newsweek, while the report was “mixed” in that hiring in November was concentrated in specific sectors, she was nevertheless encouraged by the data showing that Americans are participating in the labor market and employers are still looking to hire workers.

“Our customers are talking about hiring in 2024. They’re optimistic,” Bily said. “There are still more job openings than there are unemployed people. So, to me, it kind of points to that soft landing and, you know, I’m hopeful that we’re going to see some job creation in the first quarter of 2024.”

While polls have illustrated a weakness for Biden against Trump heading into 2024, avoiding a recession could buoy the incumbent’s chances for reelection.

“First-term incumbency typically provides an advantage—unless there’s a recession during or just before the election. When there is no recession, the incumbent has always won in the post-World War II era,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote last week.

The investment bank’s researchers noted that there was a 15 percent chance of a recession in 2024.