President Donald Trump is heading into the general election with the worst jobs numbers of any president, based on records that go back to World War II.
The August jobs report released Friday showed employers added back about 1.4 million jobs, bringing the unemployment rate to 8.4%. That is still well short of what would be needed to give Trump a positive jobs record by November 3. The only other President in the last 80 years to own an overall loss in jobs between his inauguration and the following Election Day was George W. Bush in 2004. That was because of the so-called « jobless recovery » after the recession sparked by the dot-com bust. But the loss of 605,000 jobs through September of 2004 was a fraction of the job losses that happened under the Trump administration. To be sure, the bulk of the job losses in the Trump economy were precipitated by the shutdown orders associated with the worst pandemic in 100 years. « I would say Covid-19 is one hell of an extenuating circumstance, » said Greg Valliere, chief US policy strategist for AGF Investments. But there are many who question whether the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic is responsible for deeper economic damage than would have taken place had the White House taken a more active role in fighting coronavirus. And even with millions being called back to work in recent months, there were more were 13.6 million people looking for work and unable to find one in the most recent reading. There is only one more jobs report — for September — that will be released before Election Day, and the Labor Department will start counting the jobs that make up that report next week. Even if Congress pushes through another Covid-19 financial stimulus package soon, it won’t wipe out all of the job losses that have occurred during Trump’s term.
