Ahead of elections, job growth continues to exceed expectations

Expectations heading into Friday morning’s unemployment data showed projections of about 190,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in June. As it turns out, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job market managed to do a bit better than that. NBC News reported:

In addition to the encouraging top-line data, we also learned that wage growth continued to outpace inflation. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, inched a little higher in the new report, climbing to 4.1% from 4%, which obviously isn’t ideal, though the figure is still incredibly low in historical terms.

Nevertheless, what matters most about the latest report is the overall job creation totals. I’m mindful of polls showing a discouraged public, but over 1.3 million jobs have been created so far this year, and if this pace keeps up, the United States will see roughly 2.7 million new jobs this year, which is excellent.

As for the politics, let’s circle back to previous coverage to put the data in perspective. Over the course of the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency — when the Republican said the U.S. economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.38 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.

According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created over 16 million jobs since January 2021 — more than double the combined total of Trump’s first three years.

In recent months, Republicans have responded to developments like these by pretending not to notice them. Not surprisingly, GOP officials kept the trend going late last week.

For some additional context, consider job growth by year over the past decade, updated to reflect the latest data revisions:

2013: 2.3 million

2014: 3 million

2015: 2.7 million

2016: 2.3 million

2017: 2.1 million

2018: 2.3 million

2019: 1.98 million

2020: -9.3 million

2021: 7.2 million

2022: 4.5 million

2023: 3 million

Six months into 2024: 1.33 million

This post updates our related earlier coverage.