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Msg ID: 2742435 Trump’s Final Numbers +3/-0     
Author:TheCrow
9/15/2022 12:26:05 PM

 

 

Trump’s Final Numbers

Statistical indicators of President Trump's four years in office.


 

Summary

The statistics for the entirety of Donald Trump’s time in office are nearly all compiled. As we did for his predecessor four years ago, we present a final look at the numbers.

  • The economy lost 2.9 million jobs. The unemployment rate increased by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3%.
  • Paychecks grew faster than inflation. Average weekly earnings for all workers were up 8.7% after inflation.
  • After-tax corporate profits went up, and the stock market set new records. The S&P 500 index rose 67.8%.
  • The international trade deficit Trump promised to reduce went up. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 40.5% from 2016.
  • The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million.
  • The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.
  • Home prices rose 27.5%, and the homeownership rate increased 2.1 percentage points to 65.8%.
  • Illegal immigration increased. Apprehensions at the Southwest border rose 14.7% last year compared with 2016.
  • Coal production declined 26.5%, and coal-mining jobs dropped by 16.7%. Carbon emissions from energy consumption dropped 11.5%.
  • Handgun production rose 12.5% last year compared with 2016, setting a new record.
  • The murder rate last year rose to the highest level since 1997.
  • Trump filled one-third of the Supreme Court, nearly 30% of the appellate court seats and a quarter of District Court seats.

 

Analysis

In the fall of 2020, we published a preelection update to our quarterly “Trump’s Numbers” series, and on President Joe Biden’s inauguration, we examined several statistical indicators on what he inherited. But as we noted then, the books weren’t yet closed on the Trump presidency.

It takes several months for some of the data to be finalized. While it’s likely some numbers will be revised in the future, we now have measures for Trump’s complete time in office.

Some of these figures, notably the net job loss and gross domestic product, were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which struck in Trump’s final year in office, becoming a defining issue of his tenure. Scientists quickly developed very effective vaccines, two of which were authorized for emergency use in the U.S. while Trump was still president in December 2020. But by the day Trump left office, 401,000 people had died from the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and the economic fallout was far from over.

Some data points appeared to weather the economic impact: After-tax corporate profits and crude oil production rose, and the stock market, after taking an initial hit, continued to set records. Other statistics run counter to claims or promises Trump made: For instance, illegal immigration, the trade deficit and the federal debt — measures he vowed to lower — went up instead, rising even before the 2020 global pandemic began.

As we’ve often said, readers may find these statistics to be good, bad or neutral, and opinions differ on how much credit or blame a president should get for what happens while he is in office. We leave those judgments to others.

Jobs and Unemployment

As a candidate, Trump proclaimed: “I am going to be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”

As president, Trump saw 100 months of continuous U.S. monthly job gains end in February 2019 as the economy slowed. In 2020, job growth collapsed entirely when COVID-19 went from being a localized problem in Wuhan, China, to a global pandemic.

Employment — A record eight years and four months of monthly job gains — dating to October 2010 — ended February 2019, roughly a year before the pandemic. The U.S. lost 50,000 jobs that month. The U.S. would go on to add 2 million jobs in 2019, but that was the lowest annual growth since 2010.  

And then the novel coronavirus struck. In two months, March and April 2020, the U.S. economy lost a staggering 22.4 million jobs.

Most of those jobs (56%) would return before Trump left office. But he ended his presidency with an economy that had 2.9 million fewer jobs than when he started — becoming the first president in modern times to experience a net loss of jobs over his time in office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has monthly employment figures dating to 1939.

Unemployment — As a candidate, Trump frequently criticized the monthly unemployment rates as “phony numbers.” But as president, Trump immediately began to take credit for driving down the unemployment rate, which at 4.7% was already close to full employment when he took office in January 2017. Two months into Trump’s term, then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer joked about his boss’s change of heart: “I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly — ‘They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.’”

The unemployment rate would continue to drop under Trump — until the pandemic. A month before widespread lockdowns would virtually shut down the economy, the unemployment rate stood at 3.5% in February 2020, the lowest since December 1969. During the pandemic, the unemployment rate peaked at 14.8% in April 2020, the highest since BLS began tracking the figure in 1948.

When Trump’s term ended in January 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.3% — which was 1.6 percentage points higher than when he took office, but still lower than the unemployment rates when Presidents Jimmy Carter (7.5%), George H.W. Bush (7.3%) and George W. Bush (7.8%) left office.

Job Openings — For nearly two years, Trump and the White House boasted that the U.S. had more job openings than workers to fill them. That was the case for 23 straight months from March 2018 through February 2020 — a month before the pandemic lockdown began to swell the ranks of the unemployed.

When Trump left office, the number of unfilled job openings stood at just 7.1 million — which was 25.7% more than when he took office. But, because of the COVID-19-induced high unemployment rate, there were still 3 million more job-seekers than job openings.

Labor Force Participation — Republicans frequently blamed then-President Barack Obama for a declining labor force participation rate — which is the percentage of the population age 16 and older that is either employed or looking for work in the previous four weeks. It’s true that the labor force participation rate declined, from 65.7% to 62.8%, during Obama’s two terms — although the downward trend began in 2000 and continued during Obama’s time in office, largely due to demographics, including the retirement of baby boomers.

Under Trump, the rate seemed to stabilize and even ticked upward, reaching a high of 63.4% in January 2020. But, by the time he left office, the rate had dropped to 61.4% — falling another 1.4 percentage points under Trump after going down 2.9 points during the Obama years.

working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found “the onset of the covid-19 crisis led to a wave of earlier than planned retirements.”

Manufacturing Jobs —  The U.S. economy added manufacturing jobs every month during Trump’s first 18 months in office. But those job gains began to erode — beginning in March 2019, a year before the pandemic — and took a deep dive as the virus crisis forced a wave of plant closings.

Nearly 1.4 million manufacturing jobs were lost in March and April 2020. When Trump left office, there were 154,000 fewer people employed in manufacturing than when he became president. That followed a net decrease of 194,000 under Obama.

Economic Growth

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. economy began slowing down. The real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product went up in Trump’s first two years, peaking at an estimated 2.9% in 2018 — the highest since 2005. But the economy grew only 2.3% in 2019 and the bottom fell out in 2020.

The real GDP declined 3.4% in 2020 from the previous year. It was the largest drop since 1947, when the nation’s economy declined 11.6% after years of economic expansion fueled by World War II.

As a candidate and president, Trump promised the nation’s economy would grow on an annual basis by 4% to 6%. But it never topped 3%.

 

 

Income and Poverty

Household Income — Household income rose briskly under Trump before declining last year due to the pandemic.

The Census Bureau’s latest report on “Income and Poverty in the United States,” which was released Sept. 14, showed that median household income reached $67,521 in 2020 — a 2.9% decrease from 2019 but an increase of $3,838 from 2016 when adjusted for inflation. That’s an increase in median household income of 6% during Trump’s four years. (The median is the midpoint — half of all households earned more, half less.)

However, a Census statistician told FactCheck.org that the bureau, in the next couple of months, will publish work that accounts for survey nonresponse due to the pandemic, which could change the 2020 income estimates.

In addition, Census officials have said that some caution should be exercised when making comparisons to estimates prior to 2017, since recent estimates reflect improvements made to the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement in 2014 and 2019. The bureau previously published adjusted estimates showing what median household income would have been for past years, had the current questionnaire and processing procedures been in place.

On that adjusted basis, the increase during Trump’s four years would be slightly higher — $4,083, or 6.4%, in 2020 dollars.

Poverty — As incomes decreased, the official poverty rate increased about 1% from 2019. It was at 11.4% in 2020, up from 10.5% in 2019. It was the first increase in the official poverty rate after five consecutive years of declines, dropping 1.3 percentage points in 2015, 0.8 points in 2016, 0.4 points and 0.5 points in Trump’s first two years, and 1.3 points in 2019.

In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, nearly 3.3 million more than in 2019.

Overall, since 2016, the year before Trump took office, the poverty rate dropped by 1.3 percentage points, and the number of people in poverty went down by 3.4 million.

The official poverty rate, however, does not include government programs that benefit low-income families and individuals — such as housing assistance and food stamps — that were expanded in COVID-19 relief bills that became law last year. The Census Bureau measures the impact of these programs using the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which it began publishing in 2011.

The supplemental poverty rate fell significantly last year, from 11.8% in 2019 to 9.1% in 2020 — “the lowest rate since estimates were initially published for 2009,” Census said in a Sept. 14 report.

“Stimulus payments, enacted as part of economic relief legislation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved 11.7 million individuals out of poverty. Unemployment insurance benefits, also expanded during 2020, prevented 5.5 million individuals from falling into poverty,” the bureau said.

Under Trump, the overall supplemental poverty rate fell nearly 5 percentage points, from 14% in 2016 to a record low 9.1%, and the number of people in poverty fell by nearly 15 million.

Regulations

The growth of federal regulation slowed to a crawl under Trump.

The number of restrictive words and phrases (such as “shall,” “prohibited” or “may not”) contained in the Code of Federal Regulations stayed below 1.08 million for most of 2019— a little below where it was when Trump took office. But as of the day he left office, the count had crept up to just under 1.09 million — an increase of 10,141 (or 0.9%) since Trump’s inauguration.

That small increase during Trump’s four years is a big departure from the past, when restrictions grew 12.3% during Bush’s eight years and by 12.5% during Obama’s eight years, according to annual figures from the QuantGov tracking project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

That slowdown under Trump may be temporary, however.

In what it called “the largest deregulatory initiative of this administration,” the Trump administration issued a final rule that nullified Obama-era fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks. Trump’s rule requires them to maintain an average efficiency of 40.4 miles per gallon by model year 2025, down from the 46.7 mpg set under Obama. But now the Biden administration is proposing new rules that it estimates will result in average efficiency of 48 mpg by model year 2026. 

Crime

Murders and aggravated assaults shot up dramatically under Trump, while most other types of crime declined.

In his inaugural address, Trump darkly portrayed America as a country mired in poverty, drugs and crime. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” he promised. But quite the contrary, the FBI’s annual Crime in the United States report, released Sept. 27, shows 4,157 more homicides were committed in 2020 than in 2016, when Trump was elected. (See Table 1.)

That translates to a murder rate per 100,000 people of 6.5 in 2020, an increase of 1.1 points since 2016. The 2020 rate was the highest since 1997, though still well below the peak 10.2 rate recorded in 1980.

 

The rate of aggravated assaults also rose under Trump — by 12.6%.

However, the rate of reported rapes declined by 6.1%, and the rate of robberies went down 28.2%. The burglary rate dropped 33%, and the rate of larcenies and thefts went down 19.9%, while the rate of motor vehicle thefts edged up a scant 3.7%.

The big jump in the number of murders is entirely due to a 29% rise in Trump’s final year, which also saw millions laid off from jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic; widespread protests against racism and police brutality following a Minneapolis policeman’s murder of a black man, George Floyd; and a surge in production and sales of firearms.

Guns

Sales and production of guns slowed during Trump’s presidency — until COVID-19 concerns and protests against policing triggered huge spikes last year. 

Handgun Production — In 2020, the annual production of pistols and revolvers in the U.S. set a new record of 6.3 million, according to interim figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

That represented a 75% spike from last year and an increase of 12.5% from 2016, when production surged to a previous record high of nearly 5.6 million.

 

Gun Sales — Gun sales also slowed during Trump’s presidency — until last year.

The government doesn’t collect data on gun sales. But the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the gun industry’s trade group — estimates gun sales by tracking the number of background checks for firearm sales based on the FBI’s National Instant Background Check System, or NICS. The NSSF-adjusted figures exclude background checks unrelated to sales, such as those required for concealed-carry permits.

The NSSF-adjusted figure for the sales of firearms in Obama’s final year reached a then-record high of 15.7 million. Gun sales didn’t approach that level in each of Trump’s first three years. But, in Trump’s last year in office in 2020, firearm sales set a new high of nearly 21.1 million.

The NSSF-adjusted figures are only an approximation of actual sales, since some of these checks cover purchases of multiple weapons, and of course some sales still occur without background checks. 

 

Border Security

Illegal border crossings, as measured by apprehensions at the Southwest border, were 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year in office compared with the last full year before he was sworn in.

That’s how we’ve been calculating this statistic going back to our “Numbers” articles for Obama.

 

Although Trump boasted during a speech in Alamo, Texas, just a week before he left office that “we reformed our immigration system and achieved the most secure southern border in U.S. history,” the number of apprehensions for illegal border crossings was higher during Trump’s presidency than either of Obama’s four-year terms.

But these statistics tell only part of the story. The number of apprehensions fluctuated wildly during Trump’s presidency, from a monthly low of 11,127 in April 2017 to a high of 132,859 in May 2019.

After constant talk on the campaign trail about building a wall and cracking down on illegal immigration, the number of apprehensions plummeted in the immediate months after Trump’s inauguration — “what became known as the Trump Effect,” Jessica Bolter, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told us. The monthly low of 11,127 in April 2017 is unmatched in Customs and Border Protection records going back to 2000.

But the numbers crept back up in late 2017 and early 2018. There was another small dip after the so-called zero tolerance policy was initiated in mid-2018, Bolter said. Trump administration policy required the Department of Homeland Security to refer all adults who illegally entered the U.S. for criminal prosecution. That resulted in children being separated from their parents, who entered the federal court system and were placed in detention centers for adults only. But after Trump signed an executive order ending the policy, apprehensions again rose, Bolter said. 

The number of apprehensions peaked in mid-2019, and the year ended with the highest number of apprehensions since 2007. In response, Trump issued several policies to reduce immigration flows, including measures to restrict eligibility for asylum and return non-Mexican asylum seekers who cross the Southwest border to Mexico while their claims work their way through immigration courts (the so-called “Remain in Mexico” program). Correspondingly, apprehensions dropped steadily through the second half of 2019 and into 2020.

And then, when the pandemic hit, apprehensions dropped even more dramatically in April and May 2020. As a result of the pandemic, there was an increased restriction on mobility, not just in the U.S. but around the world, Bolter said.

In response to the pandemic, Trump put into place a series of policies aimed at blocking migration to the U.S., including one that allowed border patrol to quickly expel any illegal immigrants they stopped, without access to the appeals system.

While the policy may have deterred families with children from crossing, it served as an incentive for single adults to attempt illegal crossings, multiple times if necessary, Bolter told us. And so there was an increase in apprehensions in the second half of 2020.

Trump didn’t fulfill the signature promise of his 2016 campaign — to build a 1,000-mile-long wall along the Southwest border. Nonetheless, a substantial amount of fencing was constructed.

In total, 458 miles of “border wall system” was built during the Trump administration, according to a CBP status report on Jan. 22, 2021. Most of that, 373 miles of it, is replacement for primary or secondary fencing that was dilapidated or outdated. In addition, 52 miles of new primary wall and 33 miles of secondary wall were built in locations where there were no barriers before.

Since the land border itself is 1,954 miles long, according to the US-Mexico International Boundary and Water Commission, the new fencing constructed under Trump covers just over 20% of the Southwest border. Together with what existed before Trump took office, there are now about 706 miles of barriers, about 36% of the total Southwest border.

Corporate Profits

After-tax corporate profits set new records in the first two years of Trump’s presidency — but declined slightly in 2019 and fell further still in 2020, when the pandemic forced businesses to close, some permanently. 

Still, after-tax corporate profits were higher when Trump left office than when he arrived.

 

Corporate profits hit a record $1.98 trillion in 2018 (see line 45), up from the previous record of $1.88 trillion set in 2017. Profits dipped in 2019 ($1.95 trillion) and again in 2020 ($1.91 trillion).

Despite the two-year decline, after-tax corporate profits were 8.5% higher last year than they were in 2016, the year before Trump’s inauguration.

An April study by economists at the Federal Reserve estimated that from March 2020 through February 2021 the “excess establishment exit” — that is, permanent closures beyond what would otherwise have been expected — was below 200,000 establishments. That implies “an exit rate about one-quarter to one-third above normal,” the study said. 

While many of those closures would involve small businesses that are not corporations, the figures give some indication of the economic impact of the pandemic.

Stock Market

After a pandemic-induced plunge in stock prices in March 2020 ended a decade-long bull market, the stock market quickly recovered and set new record highs.  

On Jan. 19, 2021, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock average closed at 67.8% above where it had been the day before Trump was inaugurated in 2017. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, was up 56.7% during Trump’s time in office.

And the NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies including many in the technology sector, more than doubled under Trump — up 138.2% since he took office.

These gains came after sizable increases in the market under Obama, when the S&P rose 166% and the Dow Jones went up 138% over his eight years, after the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

Wages and Inflation

During Trump’s four years in office, wages went up and inflation remained in check.

CPI — The Consumer Price Index rose 7.6% under Trump — continuing a long period of low inflation that appears to be coming to an end under Biden, as supply chain problems and other factors drive up costs.

The CPI rose an average of 1.9% each year of the Trump presidency (measured as the 12-month change ending each January), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was about the same as the average under Obama (1.8%) and below the average of 2.4% during each of George W. Bush’s years.

By contrast, CPI was up 5.3% in August compared to a year ago. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said at a panel discussion in late September that he expected inflation pressures to continue into 2022.

Wages — Meanwhile, paychecks grew faster than prices during Trump’s tenure.

The average weekly earnings of all private-sector workers, in “real” (inflation-adjusted) terms, rose 8.7% in Trump’s four years. Wages for rank-and-file production and nonsupervisory workers — who make up 81% of all private-sector workers — went up 9.8% under Trump.

The gains extended a trend that started after the 2007-2009 recession. During the Obama years, real weekly earnings rose 4.2% for all workers, and 4% for rank-and-file.

Consumer Sentiment

Consumer confidence in the economy initially rose under Trump, who promised during the campaign to “make our economy grow again.” But, like other economic measures, it fell during the pandemic. 

The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers monthly index was 87.2 in October 2016, a month before the 2016 presidential election, and 98.5 in January 2017, when Trump took office. Under Trump, the consumer confidence rate reached 100 or more five times — a level that it hadn’t reached during Obama’s eight years or any of the prior four years during Bush’s second term. 

The rate under Trump peaked at 101.4 in March 2018 — the highest it had been since January 2004. It was at 101 in February 2020, a month before the pandemic shut down large parts of the economy. From there, the rate fell 11.9 points in March 2020 and plunged another 17.3 points in April 2020, when the rate dropped to 71.8 — its lowest level during the Trump presidency.   

When Trump left office, the preliminary figure for January 2021 was 79 — 8.2 points lower than where it was in October 2016, just before Trump was elected, and 19.5 points lower than where it stood when he took office in January 2017. 

Home Prices

Home prices set annual records in each of Trump’s four years in office.

The national median price of an existing, single-family home was $300,200 last year, according to seasonally adjusted annual sales figures from the National Association of Realtors. That’s 27.5% higher than it was in 2016, when the median price was $235,500. 

Much of the rise has taken place since the pandemic hit. Existing single-family home prices jumped 12.9% from February 2020 to January 2021. Experts attribute the higher prices to high demand, supply shortages and record-low mortgage rates.  

The Realtors’ figures reflect raw sales prices without accounting for inflation. But home prices far outstripped inflation during Trump’s tenure. The Consumer Price Index rose only 7.6% during that same period.

 

Homeownership

The percentage of Americans who own their homes continued to recover under Trump, but it has yet to return to the highs of 2004.

The homeownership rate, which the Census Bureau measures as the percentage of housing units that are owner-occupied, peaked at 69.2% for two quarters in 2004. From there, the rate steadily fell for more than a decade, and tied for the lowest on record in the second quarter of 2016 at 62.9%. (Census Bureau homeownership rates date to 1965, when the rate was 62.9% for the first nine months of that year.)

The rate recovered 0.8 points in Obama’s last six months, and the trend generally continued over the last four years. In Trump’s last quarter in office, the homeownership rate reached 65.8% — 2.1 points higher than it was when he took office. 

The Census Bureau, however, urged data users to “exercise caution when comparing the second, third, and fourth quarter 2020 estimates” to previous quarters because of the pandemic and changes in data collection caused by the pandemic. Census said it suspended in-person data collection in March 2020, because of the spread of the coronavirus.

Trade

The international trade deficit Trump once promised to reduce grew larger instead, increasing three out of his four years in office.

The most recent government figures show that the total U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was almost $677 billion — the highest since 2008 and an increase of 40.5% from 2016.

Annual exports of goods and services decreased 4.6% in 2020 compared with 2016. Meanwhile, annual imports of goods and services were up 3.4% in 2020 compared with four years earlier.

Trump’s record with several key trading partners was a mixed bag.

China — After increases in his first two years, the annual goods-and-services trade deficit with China decreased in 2019 and 2020. The nearly $285 billion deficit with China in Trump’s final year as president was 8.2% lower than it was the year before he took office.

Canada — Tpan>rump inherited an almost $11 billion goods-and-services trade surplus with Canada, which later became a $261 million annual deficit in 2019. While it rebounded to a $4.6 billion surplus in 2020, that figure was 57% lower than it was in 2016.

Mexico  >The annual goods-and-services trade deficit with Mexico steadily increased throughout Trump’s four-year presidency. As of 2020, it was up to $112 billion, which was 75% higher than the roughly $64 billion deficit in 2016.

Health Insurance Coverage

The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million under Trump.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported Sept. 14 that the number of Americans who lacked health insurance for all of 2020 was 28 million — up from 25.1 million in 2016. That’s an increase of 2.9 million.

The percentage of Americans without coverage for all of 2020 rose to 8.6%, from 7.9% in 2016.

During Trump’s tenure, the number of uninsured Americans rose for the first time in a decade in 2018.

(A technical note: Due to changes in survey methods, the latest Census report says that 2018 and later estimates can be compared with 2016 estimates from a research file, available here.)

The Census report matches a trend measured on a more frequent and timely basis by the National Health Interview Survey. The NHIS put the number of people who lacked coverage at the time they were interviewed — not necessarily for the entire year — at 31.6 million in 2020, an increase of 3 million over 2016.

The NHIS said 9.7% of the population lacked coverage at the time of interview in 2020, up from 9% in 2016.

Trump failed to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act as he promised to do, but his administration did slash advertising and outreach aimed at enrolling people in Obamacare plans. In December 2017, he signed a tax bill that ended the ACA’s tax penalty for people who fail to obtain coverage, effective in 2019. And in March 2019 the Trump administration joined an effort by GOP state attorneys general seeking a court decision to overturn the entire act. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled the plaintiffs in that case lacked standing, meaning they did not demonstrate “an injury ‘fairly traceable’ to the ‘allegedly unlawful conduct,’” the court said in its opinion.

Food Stamps

Trump trimmed the rolls of food-stamp recipients, but only modestly.

The number getting food stamps (now known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance) rose by 14.7 million under George W. Bush and by another 10.7 million under Obama, but fell back only 738,469 by the end of Trump’s time in office. That’s a decline of 1.7% under Trump.

Trump had attempted to cut the number of recipients even further, for example, by tightening work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents. And indeed the total number of recipients dipped below 36.9 million in February 2020. But then the COVID-19 pandemic forced 22 million out of work.

Trump then reversed course. He signed a bipartisan emergency relief bill that (among other things) both suspended the new work requirement rule temporarily and made families eligible for food stamps if their children had received free or reduced-cost meals at schools that were then closed.

During his last month in office, nearly 42 million Americans were still receiving the food aid. That’s about 12.5% of the population, or 1 out of 8 Americans.

Judiciary Appointments

In one term, Trump’s nominees filled one-third of the Supreme Court, nearly 30% of the appellate court seats and a quarter of District Court seats.

Supreme Court — Trump won Senate confirmation for three Supreme Court nominees, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed in late October by the Republican-led Senate, about a week before the Nov. 3 election. Trump filled one-third of all seats on the high court during his term.

Obama was able to fill only two high court vacancies during his first term (and as it turned out, during his entire eight years in office) — with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan.

Court of Appeals — Trump also won confirmation of 54 U.S. Court of Appeals judges (30 during his first two years and another 24 in his last two years). That’s far more than the total for Obama in his first term, when he won confirmation for 30 judges (16 during his first two years and 14 more in the subsequent two years). And Trump’s total is just one shy of the 55 confirmations Obama achieved over eight years. 

Trump installed nearly 30% of all the 179 appellate court judges authorized by federal law.

District Court — Trump won confirmation for 175 of his nominees to be federal District Court judges.

That’s nearly 26% of the 677 authorized district judges. Obama won confirmation for 143 in his first term and 127 in his second.  

Trump also filled 10 seats on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which has nationwide jurisdiction over lawsuits seeking money from the government. And he filled three seats on the U.S. Court for International Trade. Obama filled four seats on the Court for International Trade and no seats on the Court of Federal Claims during his eight years in office.

Trump must share responsibility for this record with Republicans in the Senate.

The Republican-majority Senate not only refused to consider Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy eventually filled by Gorsuch, but they also blocked confirmation of dozens of Obama’s nominees to lower courts. Trump inherited 17 Court of Appeals vacancies, for example, including seven that had Obama nominees pending but never confirmed.

Debt and Deficits

The federal debt held by the public went up by half under Trump, and deficits also increased each fiscal year on his watch.

Debt  Trump made no progress in erasing the debt, which the then-presidential candidate once said he could probably do in eight years.

Rather, the amount the federal government has borrowed from the public went up by 50% during Trump’s time in office — from $14.4 trillion on the day he was inaugurated to $21.6 trillion the day his successor was sworn in.

Likewise, the debt as a percentage of the economy also grew under Trump, rising from 76.2% of GDP in fiscal year 2016 to 100.1% of GDP in fiscal year 2020, according to figures from the Office of Management and Budget.

Deficits  Trump left office almost four months after the U.S. recorded its largest annual deficit of $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020.

That historic shortfall was mostly the result of the coronavirus pandemic, which reduced government revenues and spurred massive government spending (and borrowing) to help the nation cope with the economic and public health challenges of the pandemic. But, prior to that, annual deficits had consistently risen under Trump, going from $585 billion in fiscal 2016 — the last full budget cycle before Trump’s presidency — to $984 billion in fiscal 2019.

In addition, as of January 2020, which preceded the March declaration of the pandemic, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had projected that the deficit would reach $1 trillion in fiscal 2020 and average $1.3 trillion between fiscal years 2021 and 2030.

Then, three weeks after Trump was no longer president, CBO projected that, solely based on laws already in effect as of Jan. 12, the fiscal 2021 deficit would be $2.3 trillion. It continued to rise after Biden took office, as the new president and a Democratic-controlled Congress provided still more pandemic relief.

Coal and Environment

Coal Mining Jobs — As a candidate, Trump promised to “put our [coal] miners back to work,” but that didn’t happen.

There were 8,500 fewer coal mining jobs in January than when Trump took office. That’s a decline of 16.7%. 

Even before the pandemic, coal mining jobs were on the decline under Trump. There were 50,900 coal mining jobs in January 2017, when Trump became president. But at the end of 2019, there were 47,700 such jobs — a decline of 3,200. The job losses continued in early 2020 and accelerated during the pandemic — dropping to a new low of 38,000 in April 2020. 

The job losses continued a trend that began decades ago. In January 1985, there were 170,500 coal mining jobs, but the industry hasn’t had more than 100,000 jobs since January 1995. In Obama’s eight years, the industry lost 35,500 jobs, a decline of 41%.

U.S. coal production declined by 26.5% under Trump, from 728 million short tons in 2016 to 535 million short tons in 2020. Last year’s production was the lowest annual level since 1965EIA expects U.S. coal production to increase 15% this year.

Carbon Emissions — Carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption dropped sharply last year because of the global economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Emissions in the U.S. fell to 4.6 billion metric tons — the lowest level since 1983 and an 11.5% decrease from 2016, according to Energy Information Administration data

But even before the pandemic, U.S. carbon emissions largely have been on the decline.

In a July report, the EIA said U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions peaked at 6 billion metric tons in 2007 and fell to 5.1 billion by 2019 — a 14% drop. “This decline in emissions occurred even though U.S. real GDP grew by 22% during the same period,” the EIA report said.

The EIA attributed the decline to numerous factors, including cheaper natural gas, an expansion of clean energy capacity, and improved energy efficiency of buildings, vehicles and equipment.

Under Trump, annual emissions rose once in four years, when they increased by 2.8% in 2018. The following year, in 2019, CO2 emissions fell 2.6% before dropping sharply during the pandemic last year

EIA expects CO2 emissions to increase by about 7% in the U.S. this year as the economy improves and travel increases.  

Oil Production and Imports

The increase in crude oil production that began under Obama continued under Trump, soaring to new record highs before COVID-19 contributed to a decline in 2020.

The 4.1 billion barrels produced last year were still more than in any year other than 2019, when nearly 4.5 billion barrels were produced, according to the Energy Information Administration. Even with the down year, crude oil production was up 27.6% in 2020 compared with 2016.

Increased domestic production under Trump led to fewer annual crude oil imports, which were down 25% in 2020 from four years earlier. The total number of imported crude oil barrels in 2020 — 2.15 billion — was the lowest total since 1991.

However, while the U.S. again became a net exporter of petroleum products last year, it remained a net importer of crude oil, specifically, the EIA said.

Editor’s note: In January, we plan to publish our first quarterly report on President Joe Biden. 



Return-To-Index  
 
Msg ID: 2742436 Biden’s Numbers +3/-0     
Author:TheCrow
9/15/2022 12:32:44 PM

Reply to: 2742435

Biden’s Numbers

Statistical measures of the president's term to date.


 

Summary

A year ago, Joseph R. Biden took office as the 46th president of the United States — inheriting an economy weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic, but with effective vaccines to finally deal with it.

To mark Biden’s first year in office, we take stock of how the U.S. has performed under the new president. Here are some highlights:

    • The U.S. economy added 6.2 million jobs since January 2021, but not all of the jobs lost during the pandemic have returned.
    • Economic growth slowed in the third quarter, but economists estimate the economy grew by about 5% in 2021 — the fastest in decades.
 
  • A key measurement of illegal immigration rose dramatically. The number of apprehensions at the border with Mexico increased by 317% in Biden’s first 10 full months in office, compared with the same period in 2020.
  • Inflation came roaring back. During Biden’s first 11 months in office, the Consumer Price Index increased 6.8%. Gasoline prices jumped 39%.
  • Wages and inflation are both up. But real weekly wages, adjusted for inflation, declined 2.2% for production and nonsupervisory workers.
  • Corporate profits and stock prices hit new records.
  • The number of people without health insurance went down by about 500,000, according to a government survey.
  • The U.S. trade deficit, which grew larger under President Donald Trump, continued to increase. The gap grew 27.3% in Biden’s first 10 months.
  • The number of people receiving food stamp benefits declined by about 905,000, or 2.2%, after steep increases during the height of the pandemic.
  • The federal debt continues to rise, and annual deficits remained in the trillions.
  • Biden has kept pace with Trump’s first year in winning confirmation of federal appeals court judges, and exceeded his predecessor in District Court confirmations.
  • The U.S. image abroad has recovered. In 12 nations, many of which are key U.S. allies and partners, a median of 62% of foreigners said they held a positive view of the U.S. — up from a median of 34% in Trump’s final year.

Analysis

It has been nearly 10 years since we published “Obama’s Numbers” — our attempt to provide a statistical measure of then-President Barack Obama’s first term in office as he went before the voters to seek reelection. After Obama won, we continued with quarterly reports. We did the same for Trump — and now we do so for Biden.

As always, we include statistics that may seem good for the president or bad, depending on a person’s partisan leanings. In Biden’s case, the economy and employment have been growing fast. But inflation and border apprehensions are also way up. 

And, as always, we make no judgments on how much credit or blame the president deserves for any of it. We also warn that no single statistic can tell the whole story.

As it was for Trump, COVID-19 has been a defining issue of Biden’s presidency. As of Jan. 19, there have been more than 850,000 deaths in the U.S. attributed to COVID-19, a figure that’s more than twice as high as when Biden was sworn in, according to Johns Hopkins University & Medicine statistics. Despite highly effective vaccines and significantly higher death rates for the unvaccinated, compared with those who got the shots, 37% of the U.S. population isn’t fully vaccinated. The human devastation and economic disruption are reflected in many of the statistics we present here.

Some statistics that we would like to include aren’t available just yet. FBI crime figures for last year aren’t due until September, for example. Poverty and household income figures for 2021 won’t be released until later this year. We’ll cover those issues and more in quarterly updates. 

In all cases, we use the most recent and most reliable data available.

Jobs and Unemployment

The pandemic remains the major driver of the economy, which has continued to recover under Biden. While the employment picture has improved dramatically in Biden’s first year, it has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Employment — The U.S. economy added 6,215,000 jobs between January 2021, when Biden took office, and December, the latest month for which data is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Biden has repeatedly boasted that that is “a record number for a new president.” And in raw numbers, that’s correct. But not as a percentage increase. Over the same period in President Jimmy Carter’s first year, employment grew by 4.6%, compared with 4.4% growth under Biden.

We should also note that jobs have not fully recovered from the pandemic. There were nearly 3.6 million fewer people working in December than there were in February 2020.

The increased number of jobs is in line with the long-term economic outlook that the Congressional Budget Office released on Feb. 11, 2021, just a couple of weeks after Biden was sworn in as president.

“Labor market conditions continue to improve,” CBO wrote. “As the economy expands, many people rejoin the civilian labor force who had left it during the pandemic, restoring it to its prepandemic size in 2022.”

Of course, the CBO’s projection was based on the assumption that “vaccination is expected to greatly reduce the number of new cases of COVID-19” and more people would return to work. It did not anticipate the spread of the omicron variant, which has led to a record-setting level of new cases.

Unemployment — Talking on Jan. 7 about the latest jobs report, Biden correctly noted that the unemployment rate — which was 3.9% in December — came “years faster than experts said we’d be able to do it.”

“Today’s national unemployment rate fell below 4% to 3.9% — the sharpest one-year drop in unemployment in United States history; the first time the unemployment rate has been under 4% in the first year of a presidential term in 50 years. 3.9% unemployment rate — years faster than experts said we’d be able to do it,” Biden said.

Indeed, CBO’s 10-year economic projections issued in February 2021 estimated that unemployment would not reach 3.9% until 2026.

The unemployment rate of 3.9% in December was 2.5 percentage points below the level Biden inherited when he took office, according to BLS. It remains 0.4 percentage points above the pre-pandemic rate of 3.5% in February 2020 (which was the lowest rate since the late 1960s).

Job Openings — The number of unfilled job openings stood at 10.6 million on the last business day of November, BLS reported, up nearly 3.5 million from January. That’s a whopping 49% increase. (December data will be released on Feb. 1.)

In fact, in November, there were nearly 3.8 million more job openings than job seekers.

Meanwhile, a record number of Americans are quitting their jobs — which some have taken to calling the Great Resignation. In November, 4.5 million people quit their jobs, the highest number since the Department of Labor began tracking the statistic two decades ago.

All of that may be good news for workers, but it has put a strain on businesses seeking to retain or hire workers, particularly those in the accommodation and food services business.

Labor Force Participation — The labor force participation rate has inched up some during Biden’s first year, from 61.4% in January 2021 to 61.9% in December.

Despite the upward trend, that’s still below the pre-pandemic 63.4% labor force participation rate in February 2020.

That’s not an anomaly. According to a BLS post in October, “The labor force participation rate never fully recovered to its pre-recession levels following the 2001 and 2007–09 recessions. At the start of each new recession the rate has been lower than it had been at its lowest point during the prior recession.”

In its 10-year economic projections, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted — both before and after Biden took office — that the labor force participation rate will continue to decline over the next decade.

Manufacturing Jobs — During the presidential campaign, Biden regularly referred to manufacturing jobs as the “backbone of America” and vowed to “revitalize” American manufacturing with a “buy-American” plan that he promised would result in a million new manufacturing jobs.

Between January and December, the U.S. added 367,000 manufacturing jobs, a 3% increase, according to BLS. That’s still 219,000 shy of the number of manufacturing jobs in February 2020, before the effects of the pandemic kicked in.

As we noted in “Trump’s Final Numbers,” the U.S. economy added manufacturing jobs every month during Trump’s first 18 months in office, but then those gains began to recede the following year. When the pandemic hit and numerous plants closed, manufacturing jobs nosedived.

Since bottoming out in April 2020, the number of manufacturing jobs rose steadily for the last eight months of Trump’s presidency, and have continued to rise under Biden.

Economic Growth

The economy has rebounded under Biden, growing faster than it has in decades.

Although the first official estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis isn’t due to be released until Jan. 27, economists generally expect that real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product grew at around 5% or better in 2021. That hasn’t happened since 1976.

The official data available so far show that real GDP grew at an annual rate of 6.3% in the first three months of 2021 and 6.7% in the second quarter, then slowed to 2.3% in the third quarter.

For all of last year, the median forecast by economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal in January was for GDP growth to come in at 5.2% when the dust settles. (That’s the figure we have used in our chart below.)

 

 

 

The “GDP Now” forecast produced by the Federal Reserve Board of Atlanta currently projects that the fourth quarter rate will come in at 5.1%, based on what economic data are already available.

Earlier, Federal Reserve Board members and bank presidents were more optimistic. They expected 2021 growth to come in at between 5.3% and 5.8%, according to estimates released Dec. 15. Their median projection was 5.5%.

And the least optimistic estimate we found came from business economists surveyed in November by the National Association for Business Economics. The NABE survey produced a median estimate of 4.9% growth in 2021 — which would still be the best year since 1999.

Health Insurance

The estimated number of people without health insurance dropped slightly — by about 500,000 — in the first six months in 2021, compared with 2020. That’s according to early release estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, which found that 31.1 million people were uninsured at the time they were interviewed from January through June 2021. Biden was president for all but 19 days of that time period. The figure for 2020 was 31.6 million — “not significantly different” from the latest figures, NHIS said.

In percentage terms, 9.6% of Americans were uninsured at the time of interview for the first six months of 2021, compared with 9.7% in 2020.

In 2016, before Trump took office and sought to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, 9% of the population had lacked coverage, according to the same survey.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the percentage of nonelderly people with ACA exchange insurance has gone up, from 3.7% in 2019 to 3.8% in 2020 and 4.3% in the first six months of 2021.

The NHIS notes these preliminary figures haven’t gone through final editing and weighting, but typically the difference between the preliminary and final estimates is “less than 0.1 percentage point.”

Health insurance estimates for all of 2021 from the Census Bureau, which examines the number lacking insurance for the entire year, are not expected until this coming fall.

Stock Market

During the campaign, Trump repeatedly warned that if Biden were elected the stock market would “crash,” “collapse” “drop 100%” and “go down like you wouldn’t believe.” But the stock market has continued to rise under Biden.

On Jan. 19, 2022, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock average closed at 19.3% above where it had been the day before Biden was inaugurated. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, is up 13.2% so far during Biden’s time in office.

And the NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies, including many in the technology sector, has risen 8.7% since he took office.

With the exception of a pandemic-induced plunge in stock prices in March 2020, the stock market has risen steadily for more than a dozen years. The S&P 500 index rose 166% over the eight years President Barack Obama was in office, and it climbed another 67.8% during Trump’s four years. The pace of growth under Biden so far is better than both of them.

In remarks on Jan. 7 about the December jobs report, Biden gloated about the continuation of the markets’ rise.

“And, by the way, the stock market — the last guy’s measure of everything — is about 20% higher than it was when my predecessor was there,” Biden said. “It has hit record after record after record on my watch, while making things more equitable for working-class people.”

Wages and Inflation

CPI — During Biden’s first 11 months in office, inflation came roaring back after a long slumber.

The Consumer Price Index rose an average of only 1.9% each year of the Trump presidency (measured as the 12-month change ending each January), 1.8% during Obama’s eight years in office and 2.4% during each of George W. Bush’s years.

But during Biden’s first 11 months, the most recent on record, the CPI shot up 6.8%.

For the 12 months ending in December, the CPI rose 7.0% before seasonal adjustment, the biggest such December-to-December jump since 1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It was also the biggest 12-month jump for any period since the one ending June 1982.

Wages — Wages also have gone up under Biden, but not as fast as prices.

Average weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers went up 5.2% during Biden’s first 11 months in office, according to monthly figures compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those production and nonsupervisory workers make up 82% of all employees in the private sector.

But inflation ate up all that gain and more. What are called “real” earnings, adjusted for inflation and measured in dollars valued at their average level in 1982-84, actually declined 2.2% during that time.

Nevertheless, rank-and-file workers still have heftier paychecks now than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic forced 22 million out of work. Back in February and March 2020 average real wages soared simply because it was mostly lower-wage workers who were being laid off. But now low-paid workers are quitting and trading up to better-paying jobs at a record clip.

Even at their recent peak, inflation-adjusted earnings remained well below the levels reached in the late 1960s. For a broader historical view, see our June 28, 2019, story “Are Wages Rising or Flat?

Gasoline Prices

The psychological effect of inflation is magnified by a huge spike in gasoline prices, advertised in foot-high numbers on street corners everywhere.

As of the week that ended Jan. 17, the national average price of regular gasoline at the pump was just under $3.31 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s an increase of 93 cents or 39% since the week before Biden took office.

Spending for gasoline makes up just over 4% of what consumers lay out each month, according to the BLS. But experts expect gasoline prices will soon ease. “We forecast gasoline prices will average $3.06/gal in 2022 and $2.81/gal in 2023,” the EIA said in its most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook this month. 

Corporate Profits

After two straight years of declining profits, corporations saw their profits surge to new heights under Biden — reaching an annual rate of just over $2.7 trillion in the third quarter of 2021, according to the latest Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

Corporate profits dropped to an annualized rate of $1.58 trillion in the second quarter of 2020, before beginning to recover — ending at nearly $1.91 trillion for the year. The $2.72 trillion figure for the third quarter of 2021 is nearly 43% higher than the full-year figure for 2020.

Border Security

A key measurement of illegal immigration rose dramatically under Biden.

The number of apprehensions at the U.S. border with Mexico increased 317% during Biden’s first full 10 months in office, compared with the same period in 2020, according to the most recent figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Illegal border crossings, as measured by apprehensions at the Southwest border, were rising steadily in the last nine months of Trump’s presidency, and then surged dramatically after Biden took office.

From January to March of last year, the number of apprehensions more than doubled to 169,216. They continued to rise, hitting a peak of just over 200,000 in July (a monthly figure that hadn’t been seen since 2000). The monthly numbers have come down a bit since then, and were at 165,783 in November. But that’s still nearly two and a half times the number from the previous November.

Jessica Bolter, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said the figures come with an important caveat. The numbers represent the total number of apprehensions, so if someone is encountered attempting to cross the border multiple times in a month or year, each is recorded separately. And there is reason to believe those repeat cases are much higher than in years prior to fiscal year 2020.

Most of the apprehensions at the border have been illegal border crossings that resulted in immediate expulsions under Title 42, a public health law the Trump administration began invoking at the Southwest border in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“It had a counter-intuitive effect on the migration patterns of single adults,” Bolter said. “It lessened the consequences of being caught crossing the border.”

Instead of being detained for a longer period of time, being criminally prosecuted or having a formal removal order placed on your record, those subject to Title 42 are simply turned around at the border. As a result, Bolter said, it encouraged people to simply try crossing again and again, driving up the apprehension numbers.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the recidivism rate — meaning the share of people caught crossing more than once — was 27% in fiscal year 2021, which began under Trump on Oct. 1, 2020, and ended on Sept. 30, 2021, when Biden was president. By comparison, the rate was just 7% in fiscal year 2019. (Given that the Title 42 policy was enacted in March 2020, the fiscal year 2020 recidivism rate under Trump was similarly high, 26%.)

That being said, the surging numbers of apprehensions “is not all an illusion,” Bolter said. “There has been an increase in immigrants crossing at the border. Part of this is due to the perception that President Biden would treat immigrants more leniently.”

Indeed, upon taking office, Biden sought to reverse many of Trump’s immigration policies, starting with an immediate halt to construction of border wall. Biden also exempted unaccompanied children from expulsion under Title 42. And he has been trying to end the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as the “remain in Mexico” policy that was introduced by the Trump administration in 2019. Under that policy, asylum seekers were sent to Mexico to await their court appearances in the U.S. Biden sought to end the program in June, but the federal courts blocked termination of the program – which continues under new standards, even as the administration continues to take steps to end it.

All of that contributed to the perception that Biden would treat immigrants more leniently, which in turn encouraged more people to attempt to come to the U.S., Bolter said.

There were some other changes that Biden didn’t implement that also had an effect on migration.

After Biden’s inauguration, the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which shares a border with Texas, stopped accepting the return of expelled migrant families with younger children. As a result, higher number of immigrants were released into the U.S., Bolter said.

In addition, devastating hurricanes in November 2020 in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala have contributed to a surge of immigrants heading to the U.S. early in Biden’s presidency, she said.

Plus, a larger portion of immigrants attempting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico are coming from countries other than Mexico and Central America. Significantly higher numbers are coming from Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela and Haiti — largely driven by poverty and food insecurity resulting from the pandemic, she said.

Refugees

As a candidate, Biden said he would “set the annual global refugee admissions cap to 125,000, and seek to raise it over time commensurate with our responsibility, our values, and the unprecedented global need.” That signaled a significant break from Trump’s policies on refugees. 

Trump placed a cap of 18,000 on refugee admissions for fiscal year 2020, and the U.S. accepted only 11,814 that year, according to State Department data.

Trump lowered the cap to 15,000 for fiscal year 2021, which began under Trump on Oct. 1, 2020, and ended under Biden on Sept. 30, 2021. Although Biden raised that cap to 62,500 after taking office, the U.S. accepted just 11,411 refugees in FY2021 — about 400 fewer than it did in FY2020 and the lowest number in 40 years.

In a Sept. 20, 2021, report to Congress, the State Department admitted it would “fall far short of the 62,500 target” in FY 2021, despite the Biden administration’s attempts to “rebuild and expand” the refugee admission program and “address the many challenges posed by COVID-19.”

Biden raised the cap to 125,000 for fiscal year 2022. But admissions still lag far below that cap.

 

The State Department data through December 2021 show that in Biden’s first 11 full months in office — from February 2021 through December 2021 — the U.S. has admitted only 13,276 refugees, including just 3,268 in the first three months of fiscal year 2022. 

In his first full 11 months in office, Biden is averaging just 1,207 admissions per month — which is 34.5% less than the 1,843 monthly average under Trump’s four years and well below the 10,417 monthly admissions the Biden administration needs to reach its 125,000 annual goal.  

(Statistical note: For both presidents, our calculations include only full months in office, excluding the month of January 2017 and January 2021, when administrations overlapped.)

Home Prices & Homeownership

Home Prices — Home prices set new records under Biden, fueled by low interest rates, a lack of adequate inventory and other factors.

The most recent sales figures from the National Association of Realtors show the national median price of an existing, single-family home sold in November was $362,600, up nearly 18% since January. The median price was even higher earlier in the year, hitting a record $370,100 in June.

Homeownership — The percentage of Americans who own their own homes declined during the pandemic and continues to fall.

The homeownership rate, which the Census Bureau measures as the percentage of housing units that are owner-occupied, was 65.4% in the third quarter of 2021. That was 0.4 percentage points lower than the 65.8% rate during Trump’s last quarter in office. 

The most recent decline began in the third quarter of 2020 when the rate fell to 67.4% from 67.9% in the second quarter of 2020 — which was the peak under Trump.

These figures, however, come with a caveat. The Census Bureau urges users to “exercise caution when comparing the second, third, and fourth quarter 2020 estimates as well as first quarter and second quarters 2021 estimates to previous quarters,” because of the effects of the pandemic and changes in data collection. 

“In the third quarter of 2021, the pandemic-related restrictions on [Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey] data collection had ended in almost all areas, and less than one-half of one percent of cases were affected,” the bureau said in a Nov. 2 release. “However, comparisons of the third quarter estimates to prior quarters may be affected to the extent that restrictions on in-person data collection were more widespread in previous quarters.”

Consumer Sentiment

With rising inflation and the continued effects of the pandemic, consumer confidence in the economy has fallen nearly 13% since Biden took office.

The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers reported that its preliminary Index of Consumer Sentiment dropped in January to 68.8 — down about 10 points from 79 a year ago when Biden took office.

Under Biden, consumer confidence initially trended upward, peaking at 88.3 in April. But concerns about inflation and the emergence of two new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the summer (delta) and winter (omicron) have shaken consumer confidence in the economy.

The low monthly rates recorded in the latter half of 2021 hadn’t been seen in more than a decade.

“The Sentiment Index has averaged just 70.3 in the past six months, whereas in the first six months of 2021 it averaged 82.9,” Richard Curtin, director of the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers, said in releasing the January index. “While the Delta and Omicron variants certainly contributed to this downward shift, the decline was also due to an escalating inflation rate.”

Another major trend has been the partisan divide in consumer confidence. For January, the Index of Consumer Sentiment was 87.2 among Democrats and 48.4 among Republicans. In August 2020, when Trump was still president, that was flipped, with the rate at 57.6 among Democrats and 98.6 among Republicans.

“Partisan views now dominate consumers’ economic expectations,” Curtin wrote in a Jan. 12, 2021, report.

While there have always been partisan differences driving consumer confidence, the partisan gap seen under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had doubled under Trump and has remained equally wide under Biden.

“Unfortunately, the size of the partisan divide in expectations has completely dominated rational assessments of ongoing economic trends,” Curtin stated. “This situation is likely to encourage poor decisions by consumers and policy makers alike.”

Trade

The international trade deficit, which grew larger under Trump, continued to increase.

Figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show the U.S. imported nearly $720 billion more in goods and services than it exported during Biden’s first full 10 months in office through November. That gap was $154 billion, or 27.3%, more than it was during the same period in 2020, when the annual trade deficit was the largest it had been since 2008.

 

Oil Production and Imports

U.S. crude oil production dipped slightly to an average of 11.07 million barrels per day in Biden’s first full nine months, down 1% from the same nine-month period in 2020, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

However, the decline may only be temporary. This month, in its Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA said it expects U.S. crude oil production to increase to 11.8 million barrels per day in 2022 and to 12.4 million barrels per day in 2023, which, if it happens, would exceed the record of 12.3 million barrels per day in 2019.

Meanwhile, as domestic production went down a bit, U.S. crude oil imports in Biden’s first full nine months increased to an average of nearly 6.1 million barrels per day — up 3.6% from the comparable period in 2020. Prior to 2021, imports of foreign crude oil had declined three straight years.

Carbon Emissions

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption also began to increase after annual decreases in two consecutive years.

In Biden’s first full eight months in office, there were over 3.2 billion metric tons of emissions from the consumption of coal, natural gas and various petroleum products, according to the EIA’s latest monthly figures. That was 9% more than the 2.94 billion metric tons that were emitted from consuming those energy sources over the same stretch in 2020.

An increase was not unexpected. In January 2021, just before Biden took office, the EIA projected that CO2 emissions would rise by 4.7% in 2021 and by 3.2% in 2022. EIA said it expected more CO2 emissions from coal because of higher natural gas prices, and higher petroleum-related CO2 emissions as transportation patterns returned to normal. For the first nine months of 2021, net electricity generation from coal was up 23% from the same period a year ago, according to the EIA. 

Crime

Nationwide crime data for 2021 from the FBI, which is what we have used for crime statistics in these reports, won’t be available until the fall. However, we do have crime figures compiled by the Major Cities Chiefs Association from 66 law enforcement agencies in big cities for most of 2021.

From January through the end of September 2021, there were 6,502 homicides in those cities, up 10.1% from the same period in 2020. Although Biden had been criticized by Republicans for the rise, the number of murders had already increased significantly before Biden took office: From 2019 to 2020, they went up 32.7%, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

For the first nine months of 2021, the number of rapes increased 1.9%; robberies were down 5.7%; and aggravated assaults were up 4.9%, compared with the same time period in 2020.

In 2020, aggravated assaults were also up, compared with 2019, but the number of rapes and robberies were both down.

Guns

Sales and production of guns slowed during Trump’s presidency — until there were huge spikes in 2020 amid concerns about COVID-19 and protests against police brutality. 

We don’t yet know if handgun production increased or decreased in 2021, as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has yet to publish its annual manufacturing figures.

But we do have an indication that purchases slowed some last year.

Although the government doesn’t collect data on gun sales, the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the gun industry’s trade group — estimates gun sales by tracking the number of background checks for firearm sales based on the FBI’s National Instant Background Check System, or NICS. The NSSF-adjusted figures exclude background checks unrelated to sales, such as those required for concealed-carry permits.

The NSSF-adjusted NICS total for background checks in 2021 was 18.5 million – down 12% from nearly 21.1 million in 2020, but still the second highest total since 2000.

The NSSF pointed out that the 2021 figure suggests that Biden, whose gun safety platform called for banning the manufacturing and sale of assault weapons, saw more guns sold in his first year in office than the previous two presidents, Trump and Obama.

 

Judiciary Appointments

While he has yet to be able to make a Supreme Court nomination, Biden has kept pace with Trump in his first year in appellate confirmations and more than matched his predecessor in District Court confirmations.

Supreme Court — One year into Biden’s presidency, there hasn’t been a vacancy on the Supreme Court. During Trump’s first year, he won confirmation for one justice, Neil Gorsuch.

Court of Appeals — As of Jan. 19, Biden had won confirmation for 12 U.S. Court of Appeals judges. That’s the same number as Trump had confirmed in his first year in office.

District Court — Twenty-nine Biden nominees to be federal District Court judges have been confirmed, while Trump had won confirmation for 10 at the same point in his presidency.

Two U.S. Court of Federal Claims judges also were confirmed in Biden’s first year.

As of Jan. 19, there were just four vacancies for Court of Appeals judges and 70 for District Court judges.

Debt and Deficits

The federal debt held by the public continued to climb after increasing by half under Trump.

As of Jan. 18, the public debt, which does not include money the government owes itself, had increased to $23.3 trillion, up 7.9% from $21.6 trillion when Biden took office. 

Contributing to the rising debt was the massive $2.8 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2021, which was still 9.7% lower than the $3.1 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2020. In both years, the unusually large deficits were due primarily to pandemic-related economic disruptions and the trillions of dollars in federal spending that followed in response. 

In March, Biden himself signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would add more than $1.8 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, including nearly $1.2 trillion in FY 2021.

And deficits and debt are expected to increase for years to come.

In its Budget and Economic Outlook published in July, the CBO projected that annual deficits would decline to a low of $753 billion in 2024 before rising to a high of almost $1.9 trillion in 2031. Between 2022 and 2031, CBO said the publicly held debt would fluctuate between about 99% and 106% of GDP.

Food Stamps

Fewer people are accessing benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, according to the Department of Agriculture’s latest data.

As of October, the most recent month for which preliminary figures are available, 41.1 million people were receiving food assistance. The number has gone down by about 905,000, or 2.2%, since January, when Biden took office.

Under Trump, there were as few as 36.9 million collecting SNAP benefits in February 2020. But that figure increased to as many as 43 million beneficiaries in June 2020, as more people turned to the program during the height of the pandemic.

U.S. Image Abroad

Under Biden, who pledged “to make America respected around the world again,” U.S. favorability ratings abroad have improved considerably, according to a Pew Research Center analysis published in June.

Pew’s polling in 16 countries from March 12, 2021, to May 26, 2021, shows a median of 61% of foreigners said they had a favorable opinion of the United States. In the 12 nations also surveyed in 2020, many of which are key U.S. allies and partners, the median figure with a positive view of the U.S. had increased to 62%, up from a median of 34% in Trump’s final year.

In all but two countries — New Zealand (42%) and Australia (48%) — favorability of the U.S. in 2021 was higher than 50%. “These broadly positive views reflect a sharp uptick since last summer,” while Trump was still president, “when ratings of the U.S. were at or near historic lows in most countries,” Pew noted at the time.

U.S. favorability was most improved in France, up 34 percentage points from 31% in 2020. America’s favorability rating also grew at least 30 percentage points among residents in Germany, Belgium and Japan.

South Koreans hold the most positive views of America, with a 77% favorable opinion of the U.S. — up 18 percentage points from the prior year. In addition, the percentage of residents in the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy who view the U.S. favorably increased by at least 20 points under Biden.

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