Job Growth Was Much Weaker Than First Reported – and Much Weaker Than Trump Brags About
President Donald Trump’s approval rating is consistently dismal, but the one area that always pulls his low numbers up is how voters think he’s handling the economy and unemployment. Trump talks all the time about how great the economy is – like taking credit when the DOW jumps up or when unemployment drops down, but never taking blame when the reverse occurs.
For example, here’s President Trump talking about the economy and low unemployment numbers – to children and their families – at a White House Easter egg roll:
Trump’s claims about jobs just got slammed, and the wrecking ball comes from one of his own federal agencies: the Dept. of Labor.
Every year the DOL goes back and reviews the numbers it puts out, dives deeper by comparing them to state unemployment insurance reports, and issues a report measuring what unemployment and job growth really was.
And for 2018, the numbers are much different than what the initial reports showed.
“Employers added a half-million fewer jobs in 2018 and early 2019 than previously reported,” according to the Labor Department, The New York Times reports, calling the revision downward “the largest in recent years.”
In other words, the DOL initially reported an additional 500,000 jobs that were never created.
Here’s what that looks like:
A contributing editor at Digital Trends says it’s a 21% drop in job growth numbers from what the Trump administration often claims:
And this senior economist offers up what the revision to the jobs numbers might look like if spread out over just a few months.
“2018, which had ranked among the strongest years of job growth in the decade-long recovery, was weaker than previously believed,” the Times also reports.