Opinion | The Trump vs. Biden economy in 17 charts

The truth is that the U.S. economy has had spectacular moments — and real train wrecks — under both men. Trump inherited a lukewarm economy that he pumped up with massive tax cuts and extra government spending. The result was a hot growth spurt and a lot of new jobs, until the pandemic hit and 23 million people were suddenly out of work. Biden inherited a nation still living through the dark days of covid-19. He injected a large dose of government spending and investment and spurred a rapid, widespread rebound. The economy grew fast, added more than 15 million jobs and even saw a renaissance in manufacturing and a surge in start-ups. But the pandemic’s hangover effects also included the worst inflation in 40 years and this still smarts.

Below are 17 charts that show the many facets of the Trump and Biden economies (with the caveat that presidents only have a limited influence). Judging by the data alone, Biden produced better results, but deep psychological impact of inflation has led most voters to say they trust Trump over Biden on the economy.

During Biden’s presidency, inflation has stung. One of the clearest ways to see this is to compare the rise of prices with that of wages. During Trump’s term, wages for rank-and-file workers rose 15.4 percent — almost twice as much as inflation did. This helped people feel as though they were getting ahead. In contrast, under Biden, wages for rank-and-file workers have barely kept up with the 19 percent jump in prices. What’s more, the supply chain glitches and price surges of 2022 set a lot of workers back. The good news for Biden is that, for the past year, wages have been growing faster than overall prices, and this trend is likely to continue. More Americans should start to feel better soon.

So far, under Biden, an impressive 15.7 million jobs have been added to the economy. Yes, the president benefited from a pandemic bounce-back. Businesses were going to bring back some workers no matter who was in the White House. But the rehiring was very rapid (helped along by the Biden stimulus), and, now, the economy has 6 million more jobs than it had pre-pandemic. Under Trump, job growth was also strong; 6.7 million jobs were added before the pandemic. But when you factor in the pandemic, Trump’s economy shed millions of jobs.

The data doesn’t support Trump’s claim that he had the “greatest economy in the history of the world” but he did preside over several years of 2.5 to 3 percent annual growth — well above the norm of about 2 percent. Of course, the pandemic recession hit during Trump’s final year in office, pummeling his record. Growth under Biden has been strong — surging to nearly 6 percent in 2021, 1.9 percent in 2022 and 2.5 percent in 2023. Indeed, the U.S. economy has been the envy of the world for its robust post-pandemic surge, as Biden likes to remind people.

Advantage: Biden, slightly

The American Dream is to own a home. Under Trump, the share of households that do climbed to almost 66 percent, up from about 64 percent when he took office. Under Biden, the rate has remained around 66 percent. The influencing factor here has been mortgage rates (which presidents don’t control). Under Trump and early in Biden’s presidency, mortgage rates were low, and many Americans took advantage of them to buy homes. In 2022 and 2023, though, mortgage rates jumped as the Federal Reserve battled inflation by raising interest rates. At the same time, in many parts of the country, home prices were also rising rapidly. As a result, 2023 became the most unaffordable year to buy a home since the early 1980s. Younger Americans are especially concerned that they will never be able to afford one.

The fruits of economic growth are not distributed equally around the country. To assess the geographic winners and losers during each presidency, we compared county unemployment for 2019 (a strong Trump year) with 2023 (a strong Biden year). The results are interesting: More counties overall did better under Biden, but counties in certain swing states, especially Michigan and Nevada, did better under Trump.

Ironically, liberal California had a stronger labor market under Trump, while a host of Republican Southern states are doing better under Biden. It’s not entirely clear why this is, but states’ idiosyncrasies probably play a role. In California, the tech sector has atrophied recently, and, in Texas, more workers joining the labor force have pushed up the unemployment rate.

Both Trump and Biden favor place-based industrial policies — Republican tariffs, for instance, and Democratic subsidies for semiconductors and green energy. And some counties and states benefit more from these policies than others.

Both Trump and Biden presided over tight labor markets, which gave all workers more bargaining power. This helped narrow long-standing gender and racial gaps in the workforce. Female and Black workers saw strong employment gains under Trump, until the pandemic set working women back. Biden has tried to create employment opportunities for groups normally left behind. In April of last year, the Black unemployment rate reached an all-time low of 4.8 percent. And for the first time ever, in March of last year, the share of Black Americans who are employed exceeded the share of White Americans who are employed. Women have bounced back from the pandemic faster than men, partly because new work-from-home arrangements permit more flexible schedules.

Advantage: Biden, slightly

Biden doesn’t get enough credit for boosting U.S. manufacturing. The huge amounts of federal money he has devoted to it have made a difference. Factory construction in the United States has jumped. Semiconductor companies are spending billions building factories in Arizona, Ohio, Upstate New York and Texas. Trump talked up manufacturing, but he had no noticeable effect on factory building. Indeed, the Foxconn factory he promised for Wisconsin never materialized.

Job growth was widespread under Trump, and it has been under Biden, as well. When the data is compared side-by-side, it shows that many more manufacturing jobs have been created under Biden (762,000 more). Manufacturing jobs are now at their highest level since the Great Recession. White-collar, health-care and government jobs have also surged in recent years. Construction was strong under both presidencies.

Home values have been rising rapidly in recent years. When Trump took office, the median home sale price was about $320,000. By the end of his term, it had risen to about $350,000. At the start of 2024, it was about $420,000. This has been great news for the two-thirds of Americans who already own their homes. But it’s made younger Americans fear that they might never be able to afford to buy a home. Most of this increase has been caused by a supply shortage in the United States.

Since the pandemic hit in 2020, new business creation in the United States has surged to its highest levels in decades. It started when people were stuck at home, out of work with little to do. But as the economy has rebounded, the boom has continued. Trump and Biden were both generous with government aid during the pandemic. But this trend appears to be mostly part of a broader reassessment of work (and life) that’s happened since the pandemic.

Advantage: Biden, slightly

Trump presided over a rise in “good vibes” about the economy. Many polls and consumer-sentiment indicators, including the monthly University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, showed that people were feeling good. Yes, he exaggerates his achievements, but people did seem to notice that the economy improved. Biden has not been as lucky. The 2022 inflation surge really shocked people. And while the rate of inflation has slowed, prices remain high, and this still makes Americans angry. Sentiment has rebounded a little in the past two years, but it remains well below pre-pandemic norms.

Real wages, meaning wages after inflation, have barely grown since Biden took office. But wage inequality — the differences in what various groups earn — has fallen dramatically. The reason it has is lower-income workers have received higher raises that kept up more with price increases. As a result, in just a few years, we have seen decades of wage inequality reversed. Nevertheless, many low-wage workers seem to prefer the situation under Trump because they did not have to contend with higher prices.

Americans often talk about how their household budgets are doing, while economists look at annual census data to see whether the typical household income, adjusted for inflation, is rising. Under Trump, household incomes rose to a high of $78,250 in 2019, from about $72,100 when he took office in 2017. But then the pandemic hit, followed by inflation. By 2022, the median household income had fallen to $74,580. The Census Bureau hasn’t released any more recent data, but economists at Motio Research estimate that median household income has climbed to about $79,000. This is good for Biden, yet many Americans still feel as though they are basically catching up to where they were before the pandemic.

In 2022, the share of Americans with health insurance rose to an all-time high of 92.1 percent (304 million people). Biden pushed to expand coverage by making government subsidies more generous for working-class Americans who buy insurance through the Obamacare marketplaces. This has been a clear change from Trump, who during his term repealed the law requiring people to have health insurance and saw the share of uninsured Americans rise.

Trump loved to point to the stock market’s rise as a sign he was doing well in office. The most popular stock index in the United States — the S&P 500 — gained about 70 percent during his first term. But stocks have also done well under Biden; not only has there been no recession, but the economy has continued to beat expectations. The S&P 500 is up about 50 percent so far since 2021 and this summer the major stock indexes keep setting records. (It’s worth noting that stock market performance under President Barack Obama was far better than under either Trump or Biden).

Advantage: Trump, slightly

Child poverty dipped slightly during the end of Trump’s presidency and then plummeted under Biden’s when the expanded Child Tax Credit and other temporary stimulus measures were adopted. But it returned to pre-pandemic levels when those programs expired. Biden pushed for an extension, but the GOP-controlled Congress wouldn’t budge. The good news here is that we’ve learned what works to reduce child poverty: giving direct cash aid to families with children.

Trump and Biden alike worsened the federal debt. The pandemic required a lot of emergency spending under both administrations. But many trillions were added outside of the context of covid. Trump added $4.8 trillion in non-covid debt, and Biden chipped in $2.2 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Neither president can claim to have been fiscally responsible.

Advantage: Biden, slightly