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Unpacking Joe Biden’s lies about the Trump job-creation miracle

Andy Puzder New York Post

Date Posted:: October 2, 2020
Is Database:: Database

Under Obama-Biden, labor force participation fell from 65.7% to 62.8% & job openings never exceeded unemployed numbers. Under Trump, job openings surpassed unemployed numbers for 24 months, LFP rose to 63.4% & wage growth exceeded 3% for 20 months.

During the Obama-Biden administration, the labor force participation rate [LFP] fell from 65.7% to 62.8%, with job openings never exceeding the number of unemployed individuals. By January 2017, there were 1.9m more unemployed people than job openings. In contrast, under Trump, regulatory changes and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act led to a reversal by March 2018, with job openings surpassing unemployed numbers for the first time since 2000, maintaining this trend for 24 months pre-pandemic. The LFP rose to 63.4%, and wage growth exceeded 3% year-over-year for 20 consecutive months, a feat not achieved during the Obama years. This environment encouraged individuals outside the labor force to re-enter, with 74.2% of new hires in Q4 2019 coming from outside the labor force, the highest since 1990. These shifts highlight significant differences in economic trends and labor market dynamics between the two administrations.

Andy Puzder on the impact of the high pressure economy, attached is an excel sheet (of our own calculations) of the following series showing the last three years of Obama’s second term (December 2013-December 2016), versus Trump’s prior to pandemic (January 2017-January 2020)

Job Openings Total Nonfarm (Seasonally Adjusted)

Unemployment Level (Seasonally Adjusted)

Ratio Of Job Openings To Unemployment

Working Age Population 25-54

Working Age Population 55-64

Working Age Population 25-64

All Employees Total (Nonfarm, Seasonally Adjusted)

Ratio Employment Growth To Population Growth

Average Hourly Earnings (All Employees, Total Private)

Labor Force Participation (Seasonally Adjusted)

Real Private Fixed Investment (Billions 2012$ Seasonally Adjusted)

Real GDP (Billions 2012$, Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate)

Ratio Private Fixed Investment To Real GDP

Real Private Fixed Investment As a Percentage Of Real GDP

Total Construction Spending Residential (Millions, Seasonally Adjusted)

Total Construction Spending Commercial (Millions, Seasonally Adjusted)

University Of Michigan Consumer Sentiment (December 2013 =100)

Real Net Fixed Investment: Non Residential Consumption Of Fixed Capital (Billions 2009$)

Puzder job openings never exceeded number of people employed for 8 years of Obama

“…For the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration,there wasn’t a single month when job openings exceeded the number of people unemployed. Zero.In fact, when Obama and Biden left office in January 2017, there were 1.9 million more people unemployed than there were job openings. So there was an abundance of people looking for work, but too few jobs opportunities open to them….”

Trump’s term (pre pandemic)“…A little more than a year later, in March 2018, that situation had reversed. Following Trump’s regulatory overhaul and passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,employment openings exceeded the number of people unemployed for the first time on records going back to 2000.Astoundingly, that remained the case for 24 consecutive months — until the pandemic — with over 1 million more job openings than people unemployed for 17 of those months….”

Andy Puzder, "Unpacking Joe Biden’s lies about the Trump job-creation miracle,"New York Post, October 1, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/10/01/unpacking-joe-bidens-lies-about-the-trump-job-creation-miracle/

2009-2017 comp, “…By contrast, under the Obama-Biden administration, people fled the labor force, discouraged by limited opportunities and stagnant wages. During Biden’s eight years in office, the labor force participation rate — the share of people working or actively looking for work — dropped from 65.7 to 62.8 percent. During Trump’s first three pre-pandemic years, it rose back up to 63.4 percent, as people rejoined the labor force….”

Impact on LFP and wage growth, “….This unprecedented competition for workers had extremely positive consequences. It lowered the unemployment rate, which consistently hit 50-year lows, and as a result, employers began competing for workers and raising wages. In August 2018, year-over-year wage growth exceeded 3 percent for the first time in nearly a decade and stayed at or above 3 percent for 20 consecutive months until the pandemic. By comparison, under Team Obama-Biden there wasn’t a single post-recession month when wage growth exceeded 3 percent. Again, zero. With wages rising, people started coming out of the woodwork to fill those abundant good-paying job openings. In the fourth quarter of 2019, 74.2 percent of workers who took jobs came from outside the labor force rather than the ranks of the unemployed. That was the highest percentage since 1990, when the government began reporting such data…”

3% vs. 60%

Torsten Sløk Apollo

Date Posted:: April 8, 2026
Is Database:: Database

Torsten Sløk notes the direct lending market is ~$2T or 3% of household and non-financial debt outstanding. To provide context, he shows that in 2006, on the eve of the crisis, mortgages accounted for ~60% of such debt.

The direct lending market is roughly $2 trillion, or about 3% of total debt outstanding for US households and businesses. By comparison, mortgages accounted for about 60% of total household and corporate debt at the peak of the housing bubble in 2006.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup^® AI

Direct lending represents a small but growing alternative to traditional bank financing for businesses and households.
The mortgage market’s dominance has shifted dramatically since the 2006 housing peak, reducing systemic risk concentration.
Non-bank lenders now capture meaningful market share in credit provision across the economy.

Top 10% of Earners Drive a Growing Share of US Consumer Spending

Jonnelle Marte Bloomberg

Date Posted:: September 17, 2025
Is Database:: Database

Mark Zandi finds Americans in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of consumer spending in Q2, the highest level since 1989.

Consumers in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of total spending in the second quarter, up from 48.5% in the first quarter, reaching the highest level in data going back to 1989, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. In contrast, the bottom 80% of the income distribution, or consumers making less than roughly $175,000 a year, have seen their spending merely keep pace with inflation since the pandemic.

Litigation Nation, Engineering Empire

Jonathon Sine Cogitations

Date Posted:: September 2, 2025
Is Database:: Database
Is Important:: Important

Jonathon Sine argues China “is moving beyond its breakneck industrial prime, facing similar dilemmas to those America confronted in the 1960s and 70s.” The ratio of science/engineering to humanities undergraduate majors is 2:1 in both the PRC and US.

Dan Wang’s “big idea” [is] “China is an engineering state, building big at breakneck speed, in contrast to the United States’ lawyerly society, blocking everything it can, good and bad.” I re-group US college majors according to Chinese disciplines to allow for rough comparison. Surprisingly, the ratio of science/engineering to humanities/social sciences is 2:1, the same as in China (if one groups management with science/engineering, as I also do for China). As with China today, America’s breakneck building phase was decidedly winding down by the 1960s. Urbanization went from 40% in 1900 to 70% by 1960, and grew much more incrementally over the next 60 years to 85% by 2020. The country simply did not need to continue building dams, expressways, and energy production facilities at breakneck pace. It became much more a matter of maintaining and upgrading (which has not gone well, at least according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ report card). The American [building/investment slowdown that started after the 1970s] may be more about structural economic shifts than lawyers.

How America’s AI Boom Is Squeezing The Rest Of The Economy

Economist Staff The Economist

Date Posted:: August 19, 2025
Is Database:: Database
Is Important:: Important

As AI-related investment has risen since 2023, residential and nonresidential investment have declined or flatlined. This may suggest that a relatively rate-insensitive AI buildout is crowding out more interest-sensitive forms of investment.

Something like a sixth of the 2% rise in American real GDP over the past year has come from investments in computer and communications equipment, including chips, and data centres. Add in the grid upgrades to power AI models, plus the intellectual-property value of the software itself, and one estimate puts the boom’s contribution to real GDP growth at 40%. The trouble is that the very sector powering so much of America’s economic growth is squeezing the rest of its output. Housebuilders, for instance, cannot afford to be blithe about higher borrowing costs. Data centres have also constrained the rest of the economy by keeping energy prices high. Average American electricity bills have risen by 7% so far in 2025, at least in part due to the extra strain data centres have put on the grid. Real consumption has flatlined since December. Housebuilding has slumped, as has non-AI business investment.

Is it Over?

Joseph Wang Fed Guy Blog

Date Posted:: August 18, 2025
Is Database:: Database

Following tepid reactions to the release of GTP-5, Joe Wang observes, “It is looking more like companies are spending hundreds of billions on rapidly depreciating GPUs that produce a commoditized product that most clients only modestly benefit from.”

GPT-5 users widely expressed disappointment in the capabilities of the new release, which seemed in some ways a step back. This sentiment is reflected in benchmarks that show a modest improvement in capabilities since the significant improvement in version 4 released two years ago. In addition, the benchmarks suggest a broader convergence in the capabilities of AI models. Commentary suggests this could be due to inherent limitations in the LLM technology and exhaustion of new training data. AI is fascinating technology, but it may not justify the enormous sums spent in its pursuit. It is looking more like companies are spending hundreds of billions on rapidly depreciating GPUs that produce a commoditized product that most clients only modestly benefit from. The entire macro landscape would look very different without the support of the AI boom.

US Households and Firms Are in Great Shape

Torsten Sløk Apollo

Date Posted:: March 31, 2025
Is Database:: Database

Torsten Sløk notes that US household and banking sector debt has fallen to its lowest level in decades as a % of GDP, while corporate leverage has moved sideways. “The bottom line is that the private sector in the US is in incredibly good shape.”

Household sector leverage and banking sector leverage have declined significantly since 2008. Over the same period, federal government leverage has increased significantly, and corporate leverage has moved sideways. The bottom line is that the private sector in the US is in incredibly good shape.

Under Obama-Biden, labor force participation fell from 65.7% to 62.8% & job openings never exceeded unemployed numbers. Under Trump, job openings surpassed unemployed numbers for 24 months, LFP rose to 63.4% & wage growth exceeded 3% for 20 months.

Torsten Sløk notes the direct lending market is ~$2T or 3% of household and non-financial debt outstanding. To provide context, he shows that in 2006, on the eve of the crisis, mortgages accounted for ~60% of such debt.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

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Mark Zandi finds Americans in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of consumer spending in Q2, the highest level since 1989.

Related Articles:

Jonathon Sine argues China “is moving beyond its breakneck industrial prime, facing similar dilemmas to those America confronted in the 1960s and 70s.” The ratio of science/engineering to humanities undergraduate majors is 2:1 in both the PRC and US.

Related Articles:

As AI-related investment has risen since 2023, residential and nonresidential investment have declined or flatlined. This may suggest that a relatively rate-insensitive AI buildout is crowding out more interest-sensitive forms of investment.

Related Articles:

Following tepid reactions to the release of GTP-5, Joe Wang observes, “It is looking more like companies are spending hundreds of billions on rapidly depreciating GPUs that produce a commoditized product that most clients only modestly benefit from.”

Related Articles:

​​Torsten Sløk notes that US household and banking sector debt has fallen to its lowest level in decades as a % of GDP, while corporate leverage has moved sideways. “The bottom line is that the private sector in the US is in incredibly good shape.”

Related Articles:

Takeaways by Macro Roundup^® AI

Torsten Sløk notes that US household and banking sector debt has fallen to its lowest level in decades as a % of GDP, while corporate leverage has moved sideways. “The bottom line is that the private sector in the US is in incredibly good shape.”