Trump Only President in Labor Stats History to Oversee Monthly Job Shrinkage

A lot of the headlines noted that yesterday’s April jobs report was better than expected. 115,000 new jobs beat the 65,000 that investors thought we’d gain amidst the economic shock caused by America’s war on Iran.

But we used to be able to expect much better monthly job figures. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, under President Joe Biden, we could expect to gain 321,000 jobs each month. Under President Bill Clinton, the U.S. added 239,000 jobs a month. Under President Jimmy Carter, we averaged 215,000 new jobs a month. Under President Lyndon B. Johnson, hippies be darned, we added 197,000 jobs per month.

Hey, did you notice all of those Presidents were Democrats?

Out of the 15 Presidents we’ve had in the 87 years that BLS has been tracking monthly employment, the four who have overseen the highest average monthly job creation have been Democrats. Ronald Reagan comes in fifth, with a monthly job creation average of 168,000. The five Presidents with the worst job-gain records are all Republicans: Gerald Ford averaging 71,000 jobs added per month, George Bush père with 55,000, Dwight D. Eisenhower with 37,000, George Bush fils with 14,000…

And Trump. Trump, Trump, Trump. In Trump’s second term, including yesterday’s relatively rosy 115,000, job creation as averaged a meager 31,000 per month. In Trump’s first term, jobs shrank by an average of 58,000 per month. Put both terms together, and so far, 63 months of Trump have coincided with an average monthly job loss of 36,000. Trump is the only President in BLS’s 87 years of data on whose watch jobs have shrunk.

April’s 115,000 job gain is lower than the 87-year monthly average of 123,000 jobs… and that’s just raw numbers, without any adjustment for population and workforce growth. America is 35% more populous now than it was during Reagan’s Presidency; we should expect a current President to be overseeing 35% more monthly job gains than Reagan’s robust (relative to other Republicans) 168,000 a month.

But 115,000 jobs gained in April is better than we should expect now… because according to historical data, under Trump, we should expect job losses.