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This is what President Donald Trump inherits as he reclaims control of the White House:
- A resilient economy that has grown by at least 2.5% every year since he left office in early 2021.
- A post-pandemic jobs boom that has driven the unemployment rate well below the historical norm.
- Inflation that has come down significantly in the past two years, but has been creeping up as of late.
- Inflation-adjusted wages that have been slowly rising in recent months, but are still below their high point in May 2020, early in the pandemic, when Trump was president.
- Violent crime that is on the decline and slightly lower than in 2020, his last year in office.
- Two consecutive years of record-setting crude oil production that continues to outpace all other nations.
- A southern border where apprehensions of immigrants crossing illegally have plummeted in recent months, dropping from historical highs to levels below the final months of Trump’s first term.
- An ever-rising federal debt and annual deficits that haven’t been south of $1 trillion since 2019 – the year before the COVID-19 pandemic — with no relief in sight.
- A stock market that has made huge gains since he was last president.
- A nation with a larger percentage of its people covered by health insurance than when he left office.
Economic Growth
During the campaign, Trump declared the U.S. economy “a total disaster,” promising to “save our economy.” To the contrary, Trump takes over a country that has rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and experienced economic growth every year since he left office.
Despite persistent concerns that high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s policy of raising interest rates to slow inflation would trigger a recession, real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product grew 2.9% in 2023, 2.5% in 2022 and 6.5% in 2021, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Most recently, the BEA estimated that the economy grew at an annual rate of 3.1% in the third quarter of 2024. The BEA will release its first estimate for the fourth quarter and the full year on Jan. 30.
Jobs and Unemployment
As Trump takes office the economy is adding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month, and the unemployment rate is well below the historical norm. There are more job openings than there are unemployed job seekers.
Employment — Although the exact size of recent job gains is uncertain, Trump inherits an economy with roughly 16 million more jobs than when he left. The total is more than 6 million above the high point of his first term, before the pandemic.
The uncertainty won’t be cleared up until February, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics will be making unusually large adjustments to the monthly job figures for 2024 and earlier as part of its annual “benchmarking” process. That’s the BLS practice of refining data from its monthly surveys, using additional information that comes in more slowly or less often, including records of unemployment insurance coverage.
That said, the most recent BLS monthly report put nonfarm employment at 159,536,000 as of December, roughly one month before Trump is taking office. That’s 16.6 million more than when he left, and 7.2 million above the peak of employment under Trump in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic forced mass layoffs. BLS said the gain in December alone was 256,000, a report the Wall Street Journal said “blew past expectations.”
Again, job totals will be reduced with next month’s BLS report. How much? All we can say for now is that a preliminary estimate that the BLS issued in August said its March 2024 figure for total nonfarm employment will eventually be reduced by 818,000 or about 0.5%, a large adjustment. If we subtract the same amount from the December job level — the best we can do for now — we get a job gain since Trump’s first term ended of 15.8 million jobs, and a gain of 6.4 million since the pre-pandemic peak.
Unemployment — The unemployment rate stood at 4.1% last month — well below the historical norm of 5.5%, which is the median rate for all months since 1948. It is also very close to the 3.9% median rate for all the months of Trump’s first term prior to the pandemic.
The number of people officially listed as unemployed stood at just under 6.9 million in December. That’s less than the 8.1 million job openings that existed on the last day of November, according to the most recent BLS report.
Wages and Inflation
CPI – Trump campaigned on a promise to reduce inflation, which has come down significantly since its peak under outgoing President Joe Biden in June 2022. But it has been on the rise again in recent months.
For the 12-month period ending in June 2022, the Consumer Price Index increased 9.1% – “the largest 12-month change since the period ending November 1981,” the BLS said at the time.
The annual CPI has been below 3% for the past six months, reaching a low during that time of 2.4% in September.
But for the most recent 12 months, ending in December, the CPI rose 2.9%, the BLS announced Jan. 15. That’s the highest it has been since the 12-month period ending in July. The December increase was driven by high energy prices, BLS said.
Jason Furman, a Harvard economic policy professor and former Obama administration economist, said in an X thread that the December figure was “somewhat reassuring” because it “came in below expectations.” But he also noted that inflation is “still a touch on the high side” and that the latest figure “continues to flag concern about the underlying persistence.”
Wages – While inflation has moderated over the past two years, inflation-adjusted wages have slowly started to rise again.
The average weekly earnings of all private workers, adjusted for inflation, rose less than 1% during the 12 months ending in December. But real wages are still down 4.4% from their peak under Trump in May 2020, although economists told us last year that the pandemic distorted real wage data because many low-wage workers temporarily left the workforce in 2020, artificially driving measures of real wages upward.
Poverty — Trump inherits a country with tens of millions of people living in poverty, regardless of how it is measured.
By the official poverty measure, which was released by the Census Bureau in September, there were 36.8 million Americans below the poverty line in 2023 – 11.1% of the U.S. population. The number of people living in poverty in 2023 was “not statistically different from 2022,” the bureau said.
Poverty is even higher when measured by the Census Bureau’s alternative estimate known as the Supplemental Poverty Measure, or SPM. By that measure, which is favored by some economists, 42.8 million Americans were living in poverty in 2023. The supplemental poverty rate was 12.9% in 2023 — up from 9.2% in 2020, when government assistance programs were temporarily expanded in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The SPM was designed “to more accurately assess the needs and resources of families,” according to a 2022 report by the Congressional Research Service.
The official measure sets income thresholds for poverty based on “a minimum food diet in 1963” multiplied by three and updated annually for inflation, while the SPM sets thresholds based on recent costs of “food, clothing, shelter, utilities, telephone and internet,” according to the Census Bureau. And, unlike the SPM, the official poverty measure does not consider differences in the cost of living based on location.
As for resources, the Census Bureau said the official poverty measure includes pre-tax cash, but “does not include capital gains or noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps).” In contrast, the SPM uses after-tax income and noncash government benefits, the CRS report said.
In 2020, Trump’s last year in office, the Census Bureau’s official poverty rate was 11.5% with an estimated 37.5 million people living below the poverty line.
Poverty figures for 2024 won’t be available until September.
Crime
Contrary to his false campaign claims about rising crime, Trump reassumes control at a time when violent crime is on the decline and slightly lower than when he left office.
FBI crime statistics released in September showed declines in 2023 compared with the previous year and compared with 2020, when Trump was in office, in the number and rate per 100,000 population for violent crime, murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Overall, the number of violent crimes declined 3% in 2023 compared with 2022 and 4.3% since 2020. The violent crime rate was 363.8 per 100,000 in 2023 — down from 386.3 in 2020.
The number of murders and nonnegligent manslaughter in 2023 declined 11.6% from 2022 and 14.5% compared with 2020. The murder rate declined from 6.8% in 2020 to 5.7% in 2023. (See table 1 after downloading CIUS Estimations for FBI data for 2004 through 2023.)
The decline in homicides, rape, robbery and aggravated assault continued through September in most major cities, according to the most recent preliminary data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
For example, there had been a 17.8% decline in homicides in 69 cities in the first nine months of last year, compared with the same time period in 2023 – including decreases in four of the five largest cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia). New York, the largest U.S. city, wasn’t included in that report, but the city’s police department said there was a 3.6% decline in murders for the full year in 2024 compared with the year prior.
As we’ve reported, there was a spike in violent crime in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to increases in murders and aggravated assaults. Experts told us that economic disruptions caused by the pandemic were partly to blame.
Oil Production
Trump inherits a country that, as he left it, outpaces all other nations in crude oil production.
In 2023, the U.S. produced a record high of more than 12.9 million barrels of crude oil per day — “more crude oil than any country, ever,” according to the Energy Information Administration. It was the sixth straight year that the U.S. led all countries in crude oil production, the EIA said.
The U.S. set a record again last year, producing 13.2 million barrels per day, and is expected to break that record this year, the EIA said.
“After reaching an annual record of 13.2 million b/d in 2024, we forecast U.S. crude oil production will increase to 13.5 million b/d this year,” the EIA said in its January Short-Term Energy Outlook report, which was released Jan. 14.
Despite rising domestic oil production, Trump often said during last year’s campaign that the U.S. was “energy independent” when he was president and, if elected, the U.S. will “quickly become energy independent” again. But, as we have written, the U.S. was “energy independent” — as Trump defines it — under both Trump and Biden.
Trump also pledged during the campaign to “cut your energy prices in half within 12 months,” promising to “drill, baby, drill” in his second term. But, as we’ve written, the price of crude oil is set on the global market and based largely on worldwide supply and demand, as the EIA explains on its website. In that story, experts told us that Trump would be unlikely to cut energy prices by 50%.
Immigration
Speaking at a campaign event in Philadelphia in mid-October, Biden pushed back against Trump’s repeated claims that Biden had essentially opened the southern border to illegal immigration.
“Despite what all Trump’s friends say, there are fewer border crossings today than the day he left office,” Biden said.
It’s true that apprehensions of immigrants crossing the southern border illegally between designated ports of entry have been significantly lower since Biden in June enacted emergency measures to restrict asylum eligibility for those illegal border-crossers. And those apprehensions have been lower than in Trump’s last months in office.
Since July, such apprehensions have averaged about 53,000 a month, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s lower than the 58,000 per month average over the final six months under Trump. We should note that despite Trump’s repeated claims to the contrary, illegal immigration was not at the lowest point in history when he left office.
But focusing on illegal immigration only over the last six months doesn’t tell the whole story. For most of Biden’s presidency, illegal immigration was at historic highs. Through December under Biden, Border Patrol agents apprehended about 7.3 million migrants attempting to cross the border illegally, though many were repeat offenders. That’s 253% higher than the roughly 2.1 million such apprehensions under Trump.
There is another piece worth noting. While Biden’s emergency measures cracked down on illegal border crossings, he has also encouraged migrants to select a more orderly method of immigration — applying for asylum status through CBP One, an app that in January 2023 began accepting appointments for a limited number of migrants who want to request asylum or parole. As a result, there has been a sharp uptick in the number of encounters of migrants at the Office of Field Operations — essentially at designated ports of entry — where many of those migrants are then released into the U.S. pending an asylum or parole hearing. Under Biden, those kinds of encounters have nearly quadrupled. They averaged just under 50,000 per month over the last year. By comparison, they averaged just under 3,300 per month in Trump’s last year. Trump has vowed to end CBP One.
Meanwhile, the backlog of asylum cases has soared. According to a Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General report last July, the number of pending affirmative asylum claims rose to over 1 million by the end of the 2023 fiscal year. That’s more than triple the number at the start of 2018 when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “announced it was facing a ‘crisis-level’ backlog.”
As we explained in a story last January, less than 15% of those seeking asylum were ultimately granted it in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, according to Justice Department statistics. But it is taking four to five years for asylum cases to get to court.
Trump has repeatedly vowed to begin “the largest deportation program in American history.” Although Trump puts the number of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally at more than 20 million (without providing backup), the Pew Research Center estimates the number at 11 million as of mid-2022, based on the latest Census data, a number that has “likely grown” in the ensuing year and a half. Trump has occasionally said that all of them will have to leave and apply to legally get back in. At other times, Trump has said he will initially target immigrants in the country illegally who have committed crimes and the estimated 1.3 million immigrants whose asylum bids were denied by the courts, but who have still not left the country.
Trade
Trump, who has vowed to increase tariffs across the board on foreign goods by 10% or 20%, inherits a stubbornly high trade deficit.
In 2020, Trump’s last year in office, the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services was $653.7 billion — the highest since 2008, according to the BEA. The deficit continued to increase under Biden, hitting a record high $944.8 billion in 2022.
For the most recent 12 months ending in November, the U.S. imported about $878.8 billion more in goods and services than it exported.
The BEA will release trade data next month for December and the full year of 2024.
Federal Debt and Deficits
Trump’s costly campaign promises to cut a variety of taxes come at a time when the nation’s debt and deficits continue to pile up.
Debt — Since Trump was last in office, the debt held by the public, which excludes money the government owes itself, has ballooned to $28.8 trillion, as of Jan. 16. That’s $7.2 trillion, or 33.3%, more than it was when Trump left office in January 2021.
Deficits — The U.S. hasn’t had a deficit less than $1 trillion since 2019 – the year before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response to the pandemic, the deficit jumped to a record $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020, declining ever so slightly the following year to nearly $2.8 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. There was a significant drop in FY 2022, when the deficit fell to about $1.4 trillion, but the decline was short-lived.
The U.S. deficit was $1.7 trillion in fiscal year 2023 and more than $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2024, according to the U.S. Treasury.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that deficits will remain well above $1 trillion for the foreseeable future, exceeding $2 trillion in fiscal years 2029 through 2035 — the last year of the agency’s 10-year forecast.
Although the new president has created a government efficiency department to cut costs, Trump’s tax plans could cost between $8 trillion and $10 trillion over a decade, as we’ve previously reported.
Stock Market
The stock market has made huge gains since Trump was last in office. Investors will be fortunate indeed if the next four years bring similar results.
Since the last full day of Trump’s first term, Jan. 19, 2021, the S&P 500, an index made up of 500 large companies, has gained 57.9%, as of the market closing on Jan. 17.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which includes 30 large corporations, has increased 40.6% during the same period. And the Nasdaq composite index, which is made up of more than 2,500 companies, is up 48.7%.
Health Insurance Coverage
In his return to power, Trump will find that the percentage of people without health insurance has fallen somewhat significantly in the United States.
The percentage of uninsured declined from 9.7% in 2020, Trump’s last year in office, to 7.6% in 2023, according to the National Health Interview Survey, which measures the uninsured at the time people were interviewed. For the first six months of 2024, the NHIS reported that 7.9% were uninsured — which was “not significantly different from 2023.”
The drop was less pronounced in the Census Bureau’s annual reports, which measure those who lacked insurance for the entire year. In a report released in September, the Census Bureau estimated the uninsured at 8% in 2023 – down from 8.6% in 2020.
The Affordable Care Act – which Trump tried, but failed, to repeal and replace in his first term – has helped reduce the uninsured rate.
A record 24.2 million people enrolled in the ACA’s marketplace for 2025, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported on Jan. 17. The 24.2 million figure for 2025 marks the fourth consecutive year that ACA enrollment has set a record, and it is more than double the enrollment for the 2020 plan year, according to KFF.
ACA enrollment increases have been driven by expanded subsidies for ACA plans enacted by the Biden administration that are set to expire at the end of 2025. In announcing the 2025 plan year enrollment figures, Biden urged Congress to extend the “enhanced premium tax credits that make ACA coverage more affordable.” In a Sept. 10 debate, Trump said he would only change the ACA “if we come up with something that’s better and less expensive.”
FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellow Ben Cohen contributed to this article.
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