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To the editor:
For those comparing the economy under Joe Biden to the economy under Donald Trump, maybe you should take a closer look at the facts and figures.
The latest jobs report for January of 2024, revealed that the economy had added 353,000 new jobs. The jobless or unemployment rate for the past 24 months has been 3.7%. Economists consider an unemployment rate of 4% or less as no unemployment since at least 4% of the population is unwilling or unable to work.
Since Biden took office three years ago the economy has added 14 million jobs, that is 4.9 million since the pandemic.
The nation’s economy expanded at the rate of 2.5% in 2023. From October through December of 2023, the nation’s Gross Domestic Product increased by 3.3%.
Candidate Trump boasted “that he would be greatest jobs president that God ever created.” The Trump administration saw 100 months of continuous job gains but that ended in February of 2019, when the nation lost 50,000 jobs before the global pandemic hit in 2020. In March and April of 2020, the nation lost over 22 million jobs.
Most of the jobs, 56%, would return before he left office, but he ended his presidency with an economy that had 2.9 million fewer jobs than when it started–becoming the first president in modern times to experience a net loss of jobs over his time in office.
Note; the source for these figures comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
When his term ended in 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.3%. As for economic growth, candidate and president, Trump promised the nation’s economy would grow at an annual basis by 4% to 6% but it never topped 3%.
How about the national debt? How do the two presidents stack up? Donald Trump increased the national debt by a staggering 33.1% while Joe Biden’s increase has amounted to 8.8%.
In the words of Detective Joe Friday, “just the facts, ma’am.”
Mary Kathryn
Gepner
Benton