August 2019: Job Growth Under Trump

Jobs Numbers for August 2019 were released Friday, September 6, 2019.  This is the 31st month of jobs reports under Trump.   We are still adding jobs; 130,000 jobs were added in August 2019.

The chart below looks at the percentage increase in jobs over six month periods.  Looking at job growth over a period of 6 months helps to even out the jobs numbers which tend to vary quite a bit month to month.  (It's very misleading to make any assessments or assumptions based on one month or even two months of jobs data.)

On the following chart each bar represents the % increase in jobs over a 6 month period ending in the designated month.  Blue bars represent six month periods during the Obama Presidency; green bars represent six month periods overlapping Obama and Trump Presidencies; red bars represent six month periods during the Trump Presidency.

Here is what job growth has looked like over the past six+ years when calculated as a percentage increase over any running six month period:

Graphed with data from BLS table CES0000000001

You will have to click on the graph to really see it, but compare the red sticks on the right (job growth under Trump) with the green and blue sticks.  Job growth had been slowing slightly since 2014-2015.  Job growth picked up during 2017-18, but it didn't match the growth in 2014-15 under Obama. 

But job growth since late 2018 has slowed down significantly. 

How do the first 18 months of Trump's presidency compare to the last 18 months of Obama's presidency in terms of job growth?

Trump vs. Obama:  31 Months

• In the first 31 months of the Trump presidency, we added a total of 5,846,000 jobs; that is, 188,580 jobs/month.
• In the last 31 months of the Obama presidency, we added a total of 6,838,000 jobs; that is, 220,580 jobs/month. 

What does the future hold for job growth under Trump? 

We really don't know.  We know that job growth is usually better under Democratic administrations, but  there's nothing predictive there.  Basically, though, Trump crows about job growth... but job growth during the Trump administration to date does NOT compare positively to job growth during the last years of the Obama administration.