The unemployment rate in November fell to 3.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
When Donald Trump left office in January 2021, the unemployment rate stood at 6.3 percent, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of the Labor Statistics (BLS). On Friday, the U.S. economy added nearly 200,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate ticking down to 3.7 percent, just a little over the pre-pandemic rate of 3.5 percent in February 2020.
The former president had presided over historically low unemployment rates at under 5 percent for the bulk of his presidency. But then COVID-19 hit and the pandemic-induced economic crisis led to millions of Americans losing their jobs as the U.S. economy locked down, with consumers forced to stay at home to stop the spread of the virus. The unemployment rate soared over a two month period and by April 2020 it spiked to nearly 15 percent, the highest in more than 70 years, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Trump, however, did witness the jobless rate fall to a little above 6 percent as he departed the White House and was succeeded by President Joe Biden.
With a little over a month left before the first primary votes of the 2024 presidential election are cast, polls suggest that Trump may emerge with the Republican nomination and once again face-off against Biden. The election may hinge on the state of the economy, with polls showing that the issue is atop the electorate’s minds.
Biden has claimed credit for jobs the economy has added since he took office in January 2021, amid an environment of elevated inflation that at one point hit 40-year highs on the back of consumer spending and stifled supply chains combining to push up prices.
The rise in prices sparked aggressive rate hikes by the Federal Reserve to slow the economy and arrest the jump in inflation.
