For this Trust Index we’re taking a look at a pair of claims about the state of the economy under the trump administration.
“GDP is through the roof, jobs, real estate housing so many things are happening,” President Trump told one audience member during Thursday night’s town hall on NBC.
We’re going to rate this not true.
After review, we've found this information is Not True.
According to data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the President has had a similar GDP than President Obama coming in at around 2.5 percent on average. While economists generally view GDP between 2-3 percent as good or even ideal, but it’s hard to call it through the roof.
Here’s the other claim about the economy:
“We created more jobs than this country ever created. We were just hitting 160 million jobs,” Trump said.
He cited the 160 million figure several times over the course of the town hall.
The Trust Index team is labeling this claim -- no matter when it was said -- a “be careful.”
After reviewing this topic, we've found some issues - Be Careful.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, The US was about at about 152 million jobs in early 2020 so the President did some unorthodox rounding. However, that number isn’t reflective of employment compared to population and employment naturally grows as population does, which makes it somewhat misleading.
As for the most jobs created the President doesn’t earn that title either, depending on the number used, economists credit either President Bill Clinton has the highest total number of jobs, 18.7 million or President Ronald Reagan with the highest percentage of jobs at 16.6 percent.
More Town Hall fact checks from the Trust Index: