Trump’s Numbers July 2019 Update

Summary

Since President Donald Trump took office:

• The jobless rate fell further, to the lowest in nearly 50 years. The number of job openings grew to the highest in at least 18 years.
• Economic growth picked up, but remained far short of what Trump promised.
• The growth of federal regulatory restrictions stopped.
• Handgun production fell 21 percent, and sales of all guns also dropped.
• Carbon dioxide emissions stopped falling, and rose 1.8 percent.
• Illegal Mexico-U.S. border crossings surged to the highest number in over a decade.
• Stock prices and after-tax corporate profits set records. So did single-family home prices.
• The U.S. trade deficit, which Trump promised to reduce, grew by nearly 28%.
• The number of people without health insurance rose by 2 million to 7 million, depending on the survey.
• Weekly wages grew faster than inflation, and the number of people getting food stamps fell to the lowest in nearly 10 years.
• The federal debt rose by $1.8 trillion. Annual deficits accelerated.

Analysis

This is our sixth quarterly update of the “Trump’s Numbers” scorecard that we posted in January 2018 and have updated every three months, most recently on April 11. We’ll publish additional updates every three months, as fresh statistics become available.

Here we’ve included statistics that may seem good or bad or just neutral, depending on the reader’s point of view. That’s the way we did it when we posted our first “Obama’s Numbers” article more than six years ago — and in the quarterly updates and final summary that followed. And we’ve maintained the same practice under Trump. 

Then as now, we make no judgment as to how much credit or blame any president deserves for things that happen during his time in office. Opinions differ on that.

Jobs and Unemployment

Job growth slowed a bit under Trump, but unemployment dropped to the lowest level in nearly half a century.

Employment — Total nonfarm employment grew by 5,613,000 since the president took office, according to the most recent figures available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That continued an unbroken chain of monthly gains in total employment that started in October 2010. The economy has now added jobs for 105 consecutive months, including the first 29 months of the Trump administration.

The average monthly gain under Trump so far is 194,000 — compared with an average monthly gain of 217,000 during Obama’s second term. Trump will have to pick up the pace if he is to fulfill his campaign boast that he will be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”

Unemployment — The unemployment rate, which was well below the historical norm when Trump took office, has continued to fall even more.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics now figures the rate was 4.7% when he was sworn in. The most recent rate, for June, is 3.7%.

It had been as low as 3.6% in April and May, the lowest since December 1969, when it was 3.5%.

The jobless rate has been at or below 4% for the most recent 16 months on record. It hasn’t been that low for that long since a 50-month streak ending in January 1970.

The historical norm is 5.6%, which is the median monthly rate for all the months since the start of 1948.

Job Openings — One reason employment growth has slowed is a shortage of qualified workers.

The number of unfilled job openings hit more than 7.6 million in November and again in January, the highest in the 18 years the BLS has tracked this figure.

As of the last day of May, the most recent figure on record, it was still over 7.3 million. That’s a gain of 1.7 million unfilled job openings — or 30.2% — since Trump took office.

In March of last year the number of job openings exceeded the number of unemployed people looking for work for the first time on record. And that’s been the case in every month since. In May there were 1.4 million more job openings than there were people seeking jobs.

Labor Force Participation — Despite the abundance of jobs, the labor force participation rate — which went down 2.8 percentage points during the Obama years — is unchanged under Trump.

The labor force participation rate is the portion of the entire civilian population age 16 and older that is either employed or currently looking for work in the last four weeks. Republicans often criticized Obama for the decline during his time, even though it was due mostly to the post-World War II baby boomers reaching retirement age, and other demographic factors beyond the control of any president.

Since Trump took office, the rate has fluctuated in a narrow range between 63.2% and 62.7%. It was 62.9% in June — exactly where it was the month Trump took office.

Manufacturing Jobs — Manufacturing jobs increased under Trump, at the same rate as total employment.

The number rose by 486,000 between Trump’s inauguration and June. That followed a net decrease of 193,000 under Obama. The rise under Trump amounts to 3.9 percent, the same rate as total employment has grown.

The number of manufacturing jobs is still 892,000 below where it was in December 2007, at the start of the Great Recession.

Economic Growth

The economy grew somewhat faster under Trump — but not at the rate he promised. Gross domestic product was growing at an annual rate of 3.1% during the first quarter of this year, after going up 2.9% in 2018 and 2.2% during his first year in office.

So far, growth under Trump has averaged far less than the 4% to 6% per year that he promised repeatedly, both when he was a candidate and also as president. It spurted briefly to a 4.2% annual rate in the second quarter of 2018, prompting Trump to proudly claim credit. But it’s fallen below that level ever since.

Trump’s best growth numbers may already be behind him. Economists say future growth rates will be considerably lower than the 3.1% rate of the first quarter — and nowhere close to what Trump promised.

The first official estimate of growth in the second quarter of 2019 isn’t scheduled to be released until July 26. However, the “GDPNow” forecast produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta projects that the second-quarter growth rate will come in at 1.4% based on several economic indicators that are already known.

And most economists believe this year’s growth will be less than last year’s. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s most recent economic outlook projects real GDP growth falling to 2.7% this year and 1.9% next year. But since that estimate was issued Jan. 28, signs of further slowing in 2019 have appeared.

A more recent median forecast of the Federal Reserve Board members and Federal Reserve Bank presidents, issued June 19, projects 2.1% growth this year and 2.0% in 2020. Even more pessimistic were the business and university economists who offered an annual GDP forecast to the Wall Street Journal’s monthly economic survey in June. Their average prediction was for only 2.2% growth this year and 1.6% next year.

The National Association for Business Economics’ June survey was the most optimistic, but even the NABE survey produced a median forecast of 2.6% growth for this year and 2.1% in 2020. 

Regulations

The growth of federal regulation has stopped under Trump.

It wasn’t exactly the “sudden, screeching and beautiful halt” Trump prematurely claimed back in December 2017, when in fact the number of federal restrictions was still growing. But over the next several months the rise decelerated, and then reversed. The number of restrictions has now dropped to just below where it was when Trump was sworn in.

The number of restrictive words and phrases (such as “shall,” “prohibited” or “may not”) contained in the Code of Federal Regulations went up by 0.73% within Trump’s first 15 months, reaching a peak of nearly 1.09 million on April 6, 2018, according to daily tracking done by the QuantGov project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

But as of July 10, 2019, the number had dropped back below 1.08 million — 1,030 fewer than on Jan. 20, 2017, the day Trump took office.

In percentage terms, the drop is just under one-tenth of 1%. But that’s a big change from the past. Restrictions grew at an average of 1.5% per year during both the Obama years and the George W. Bush years, according to annual QuantGov tracking.

The Mercatus count of restrictions doesn’t attempt to assess the cost or benefit of any particular rule — such assessments require a degree of guesswork and are sensitive to assumptions. But it does track the sheer volume of federal rules with more precision than we have found in other metrics.

Some of the recent changes are just clearing deadwood. In March, for example, the Internal Revenue Service removed 296 regulations that it said “are no longer necessary because they do not have any current or future applicability.” And last year the Treasury Department scrapped an entire chapter of zombie-like regulations issued by the old Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversaw the savings-and-loan industry before being abolished in 2011. S&Ls have since fallen under other federal banking regulators, but the obsolete OTS rules remained on the books.

However, many of the rules Trump has eliminated are quite significant. Within a month of taking office, for example, Trump signed a law nullifying an Obama-era rule prohibiting coal mining companies from dumping waste into streams and waterways. Last year his administration withdrew Obama’s edict requiring automakers to double the fuel efficiency of new cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2025. Instead, the requirement will be capped at 37 mpg starting in 2020. And in May, Trump signed a massive rollback of banking regulations, easing rules for all but the largest banks.

Crime

Crime declined during Trump’s first year, and the downward trend accelerated in the first half of 2018.

Preliminary FBI statistics, released Feb. 25, show the number of violent crimes went down 4.3% in the first half of last year, compared with the same period in 2017. The number of property crimes declined even more, by 7.2%.

That followed a 0.2% decline in violent crimes and a 3% drop in property crimes during all of 2017, according to the FBI’s annual Crime in the United States report. Nationwide FBI figures for 2018, which include crime rates per 100,000 inhabitants, won’t be released until later this year, likely in September.

Crime had been rising during the two years before Trump took office, a trend he greatly exaggerated when he was a candidate. During his campaign, Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that the murder rate was “the highest it’s been in 45 years.” In fact, the murder rate had dropped to the lowest on record in 2014 — 4.4 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. And while it did rise for the next two years, it was still only 5.4 per 100,000 in 2016, far below the peak rate of 10.2 reached in 1980.

Guns

Sales and production of guns pulled back under Trump, after surging to record levels during the Obama years.

Handgun Production — In Trump’s first year annual production of pistols and revolvers in the U.S. totaled over 4.4 million, according to most recent figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

That represented a decline of 21 percent from 2016, when production surged to a record level of nearly 5.6 million.

 

Handgun production more than tripled during the Obama years. So the 2017 level was still 143% higher than it had been in 2008, the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency.

Gun Sales — Gun sales also dropped in 2017, and continued to fall last year and so far this year.

The government doesn’t collect figures on sales of guns. But the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the gun industry’s trade group — tracks approximate sales figures by adjusting FBI statistics on background checks to remove those not related to actual sales, such as checks required for concealed-carry permits.

Those NSSF-adjusted figures dropped from a record 15.7 million in Obama’s final year to 13.1 million last year — a decrease of 16.5%. And sales seem to be continuing to slide this year; the NSSF-adjusted figure for the first half of 2019 was 5.3% below the same period last year.

These figures cover rifles and shotguns and previously owned weapons, as well as new handguns. They 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.

Coal and Environment

Coal Mining Jobs — As a candidate, Trump promised to “put our [coal] miners back to work,” but so far not many have regained their jobs.

A total of 35,600 coal mining jobs disappeared during the Obama years, but as of June, only 2,200 of them had come back since Trump took office, according to BLS figures.

The outlook for coal miners remains bleak. The Energy Information Administration reports that U.S. consumption of coal reached a 39-year low last year. EIA also predicts that production of coal will fall 9% this year and 7% next year. EIA expects natural gas will continue to displace coal for the generation of electricity.

Carbon Emissions — Carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption have gone up under Trump, after falling for years before he took office.

Figures from the Energy Information Administration show CO2 emissions were 1.8% higher in the most recent 12 months on record (ending in March) than they were in 2016.

In the decade before Trump took office, emissions fell by a total of 14.5%, due mainly to electric utilities shifting away from coal-fired plants in favor of cheaper, cleaner natural gas, as well as solar and wind power. Under Trump, the trend first slowed — emissions fell only 0.8% in 2017 — and then reversed entirely — rising 2.7% in 2018.

EIA said the 2018 rise was a temporary blip — brought on by a hotter summer and colder winter than normal, resulting in higher natural gas consumption. EIA is currently predicting that CO2 emissions will fall by 2.2% in 2019 — if temperatures return to normal as forecast. But so far, there has been a net gain in total carbon emissions since Trump took office.

Border Security

Illegal border crossings surged under Trump, to the highest levels in well over a decade.

In May, 132,880 people were apprehended trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border without permission, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That was the highest total since March 2006, when the monthly total hit nearly 161,000. 

Last month the total dropped to 94,897 — after Mexico cracked down on U.S.-bound immigrants in response to Trump’s threat to impose new tariffs on Mexican goods. But that still leaves the average monthly total for this year at 89,128. That is higher than the monthly average for any full year since 2005, when it hit just over 99,000.

 

For the most recent 12 months on record, the monthly average was 66,557 which is 80.3% higher than the monthly average of 36,912 in 2016. We use this rolling monthly average for our chart, because these monthly figures are subject to wide seasonal variations.

Of those apprehended in June, less than one-third were single adults. Rather, 68% were either unaccompanied children or part of “family units” made up of a child under 18 accompanied by a parent or guardian. Border Patrol officials said they are coming primarily from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and many are seeking asylum. It’s a big change from the days when most such attempted border crossings were made by Mexican males seeking work.

Corporate Profits

After-tax corporate profits are running at record levels under Trump. During 2018, they hit $1.95 trillion for the year, eclipsing the previous annual record set under Obama in 2014. During the first three months of 2019, profits still were running at a yearly rate of $1.94 trillion — higher than any quarter before Trump took office.

 

The most recent quarter’s annual rate is 11.8% higher than the full-year figure for 2016, the year before Trump’s inauguration.

These annual and quarterly estimates originate with the Bureau of Economic Analysis (see line 45).

After-tax profits got a boost in 2018 from the tax cut Trump signed into law on Dec. 22, 2017, dropping the top federal tax rate on corporate income to 21%, from 35%. Profits before taxes (line 43) actually edged down last year — by just under two-tenths of 1%. Before taxes, last year’s profits were actually 3.7% below the 2014 level, which is still the highest on record for pre-tax profits.

Stock Market

Stock prices continued their decade-long rise with Trump in office — though lately it’s been a bumpy ride.

Market indexes set record after record in 2018, only to plunge during the worst December since 1931. Then prices roared back in the best first quarter in a decade, and rallied on to set new records in July.

At the close on July 11, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock average was at a record high for the second time in the month — and 32.5% higher than it was on the last trading day before Trump’s inauguration.

Other indexes took similar rides. At the July 11 close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, also hit its second record high for the month, closing above 27,000 for the first time. It was up 37.3% under Trump. And the NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies, closed on July 11 at 47.9% higher than before Trump took office (and only 0.08% below the record it had set the day before).

The bull market began its rise in the depths of the Great Recession in 2009, and became the longest in history last year. This year it passed its 10th anniversary in March.

Wages and Inflation

The upward trend in real wages continued under Trump, and inflation remained in check.

CPI — The Consumer Price Index rose 4.7% during Trump’s first 29 months, continuing a long period of historically low inflation.

In the most recent 12 months, ending in June, the CPI rose 1.7%. The CPI rose an average of 1.8% each year of the Obama presidency (measured as the 12-month change ending each January), and an average of 2.4% during each of George W. Bush’s years.

Wages — Paychecks continued to grow faster than prices.

The average weekly earnings of all private-sector workers, in “real” (inflation-adjusted) terms, rose 2.5% during Trump’s first 29 months (ending in June) after going up 3.9% during the previous four years.

Those figures are for all private-sector workers, including managers and supervisors.

For rank-and-file production and nonsupervisory workers (who make up 82% of all private-sector workers), real weekly earnings have gone up 2.7% so far under Trump, after rising 4.9% during Obama’s last four years in office.

Consumer Sentiment

Consumer confidence in the economy rose under Trump.

The average annual level of the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers under Trump so far is 97.2 — more than 10 points higher than the average during Obama’s last term.

But it’s been a bumpy ride. The survey’s monthly index peaked at 101.4 in March of last year, which was the highest in more than 15 years. Then by January this year the index was back down to 91.2 — exactly where it had been in September 2016, before Trump was elected.

Most recently, in June, the survey index had recovered to 98.2.

Home Prices and Ownership

Home Prices — Home prices soared to record levels under Trump.

The most recent sales figures from the National Association of Realtors show the national median price of an existing, single-family home sold in May was $280,200 — the highest monthly figure ever recorded.

The median for all of 2018 was $261,600, the highest full-year figure on record.

The May figure is $51,500 higher than the median price of $228,700 for homes sold during the month Trump took office — a gain in value of 22.5%. The rise in the Consumer Price Index during the same period was 4.7%.

The Realtors’ figures reflect raw sales prices without attempting to adjust for such factors as variations in the size, location, age or condition of the homes sold in a given month or year. Even so, a similar pattern emerges from the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which compares sales prices of similar homes and seeks to measure changes in the total value of all existing single-family housing stock.

The Case-Shiller index for April sales (the most recent available) was the highest on record — and 12.5% above where it stood in the month Trump took office. 

Whichever way you measure it, homeowners have seen the value of their houses rise substantially since Trump became president.

Homeownership — The percentage of Americans who own their homes at first continued to recover under Trump, but lately has taken a dip.

Back in 2004 the homeownership rate hit a record 69.2% of households for two quarters, but then began a years-long slide, hitting bottom in the second quarter of 2016 at 62.9%. That was the lowest point in more than half a century, and tied for the lowest on record.

The rate recovered 0.8 points in the six months before Trump took office, and went up another 1.1 points during his first two years, reaching 64.8% in the fourth quarter of 2018. But most of that gain under Trump was erased in the first three months of this year, according to the most recent Census Bureau figures.

The most recent rate, for the first quarter of 2019, stands at 64.2%. That’s half a percentage point higher than the quarter before Trump took office, and still a full 5 points below the peak level of 15 years earlier.

Trade

The trade deficit that Trump promised to reduce grew much larger instead.

The most recent government figures show that the total U.S. trade deficit in goods and services during the most recent 12 months on record (ending in May) was $643 billion. That’s an increase of $140 billion, or 27.9%, compared with 2016.

China — The goods-and-services trade deficit with China grew at a somewhat slower pace, up by 19.6% between 2016 and the most recent 12 months on record (ending in March) when it hit nearly $370 billion. 

Trump last year initiated a full-scale trade conflict with China, imposing tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods. China has retaliated with its own tariffs on $110 billion of U.S. goods. Trump met personally with Chinese President Xi Jinping on June 29 in Osaka, Japan, but it remains to be seen how the trade war will be resolved, and what effect that might have on future trade.

Mexico — Meanwhile, the much smaller trade deficit in goods and services with Mexico totaled $84 billion during the 12 months ending in December, an increase of 35.2% compared with 2016. 

Canada — The trade surplus that the U.S. runs with Canada has shrunk by nearly half under Trump. The trade balance was positive by $4.0 billion during the 12 months ending in December. That surplus is 46.1% smaller than it was in 2016. 

On Nov. 30 last year Trump and the leaders of Canada and Mexico signed a new trade agreement to replace the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump had promised to scrap during his campaign. The new agreement will be called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. The new agreement still requires approval by Congress before it can take effect.

Health Insurance Coverage

The number of people lacking health insurance rose by nearly 2 million during Trump’s first two years.

During 2018 an estimated 30.4 million people lacked health insurance coverage at the time they were interviewed, according to the National Health Interview Survey’s most recent report, which was issued May 9. That’s an increase of 1.8 million compared with 2016.

The NHIS said 9.4% of the population lacked coverage during 2018, up from 9% in 2016.

A much greater rise was reported by a Gallup survey covering the final quarter of 2018. Gallup on Jan. 23 put the rise in uninsured adults at about 7 million, compared with the last half of 2016. Gallup put the percentage of uninsured adults at 13.7% in the October-December quarter.

The two surveys aren’t strictly comparable. For details, see our Feb. 12 story, “Did the Uninsured Increase by 7 Million?“ But taken together, the NHIS and Gallup findings point to an upward trend that seems to have accelerated during the latter part of last year. 

The NHIS figure for all of 2018 took a big jump from its earlier estimates. Last November it reported that during the first half of 2018 there were 100,000 fewer people lacking coverage, compared with all of 2016. The NHIS doesn’t break out the total number of uninsured people for each quarter. But arithmetically, changing a first-half drop to a big full-year increase requires a jump of even more than 1.8 million during the last half of 2018.

Trump failed to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act as he promised to do, but 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 this year. And in March the Trump administration joined an effort by GOP state attorneys general seeking a court decision to overturn the entire act. That case, Texas v. U.S., was argued July 9 before the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans. News accounts said the judges appeared skeptical about whether Obamacare could survive, putting the law’s future in doubt.

Food Stamps

The number of food stamp recipients dropped to the lowest in nearly a decade.

As of April, the most recent month for which figures are available, 36 million people were receiving the aid — the lowest since July 2009.

The number of food stamp recipients has gone down 6.7 million, or 15.7%, since January 2017, when Trump took office.

(Although the number appeared to plunge to 7.3 million in February, officials said that’s just an aberration. February benefits were paid early, in January, to 86% of recipients in a maneuver to avoid deep cuts that might have occurred due to a lapse in U.S. Department of Agriculture appropriations during the partial government shutdown that ended Jan. 25. USDA said this glitch in the data “in no way altered the underlying trends” in actual participation.)

The number of recipients generally has been going down since peaking at nearly 47.8 million in December 2012, as the economy recovered from the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

Currently, the Trump administration is mulling a proposed rule that would tighten work requirements for able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 49 with no dependents. Generally, the rules limit aid to three months for such adults, but many states secured waivers to that rule during the 2007-2009 recession and still have them in place, despite a booming economy. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that if implemented, the rule change would cause 755,000 individuals to lose eligibility for assistance, which amounts to about 2% of current recipients. 

Judiciary Appointments

Trump is putting his mark on the federal appeals courts more quickly than Obama was able to do in his time in office.

Supreme Court — So far Trump has won Senate confirmation for two Supreme Court nominees, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Obama also was able to fill two high court vacancies during his first two years in office, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan. But the Kavanaugh nomination to fill the vacancy created by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement is significant because Kavanaugh may move the court to the right. He is considered more conservative than Kennedy, who sometimes sided with the liberal justices to provide deciding votes on issues including gay rights, abortion, capital punishment and affirmative action.

However, Kavanaugh disappointed abortion foes when he sided with the court’s liberals on one of his first votes, against taking up a case about whether citizens should be allowed to sue states that cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood health clinics.

Court of Appeals — Trump also won confirmation of 42 U.S. Court of Appeals judges (30 during his first two years and another 12 in the current Congress as of July 11). That’s more than double the total for Obama, who won confirmation for only 19 as of the same point in his first term (16 during his first two years and three more in the 112th Congress as of July 11, 2011). 

Trump has now installed more than 23% of all the 179 appellate court judges authorized by federal law.

District Court — When it comes to the lower courts, Trump surpassed Obama. Trump has won confirmation for 83 of his nominees to be federal District Court judges, including three who were confirmed July 10 to courts in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Florida. That’s just over 12% of the 677 authorized district judges. Obama had won confirmation for 69 at the same point in his presidency.   

Trump has also filled two seats on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which has nationwide jurisdiction over lawsuits seeking money from the government. Obama had filled none at the same point in his first term.

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

Federal Debt and Deficits

Trump inherited rising federal debt and deficits, and his tax cut and spending increases are making both rise faster.

The federal debt held by the public stood at $16.2 trillion at the last count on July 10 — an increase of $1.8 trillion since he took office. That’s a 12.5% increase under Trump. And that figure will go up even more quickly in coming years unless Trump and Congress impose massive spending cuts, or reverse course and increase taxes.

Trump’s cuts in corporate and individual income tax rates — as well as the bipartisan spending deal he signed Feb. 9, 2018 — are causing the red ink to gush even faster than it did before.

CBO’s latest update of its Budget and Economic Outlook, issued May 2, estimates that under current law, the deficit will continue rising for the foreseeable future, exceeding $1 trillion annually starting in fiscal year 2022. (Baseline deficit projections are in Table 1-1, line 31.)