When Obama left office, Jan 20, 2017, the Dow closed at 19,827. When he entered office, Jan 20, 2009, the Dow closed at 7,949. In other words, in his 8 years in office the Dow went up roughly 150%. If Trump stays in office 8 years, the Dow would have to be 49,369 for his term in office to equal Obama’s as it relates to the stock market and the Dow Jones Industrial average.
Furthermore, private sector job growth was up 2.2 million in 2016, Obama’s last year in office while job growth in 2017, Trump’s first year, was up 2.1 million. First quarter 2018, job growth was 605,000. Job growth in the first quarter of 2016 was 606,000. Again, job growth under Obama was marginally better than under Trump.
In Obama’s last year, Bill OReilly, then the most popular Fox news host, complained that jobs created under Obama were misleading because the labor participation rate was only 63% which is virtually exactly where it is after the first quarter of 2018.
Average hourly wages grew approximately 3 percent in 2016 and were up approximately 2.3 percent in 2017. Once again, the self proclaimed jobs President, Donald Trump, has underperformed Obama despite doing away with what the Republicans call “job killing regulations”, a very large corporate tax cut and increases in deficit spending.
For modern presidents that served eight years, job growth in Bill Clinton’s two terms was 21.5 million. During the Obama administration, 17.3 million jobs were created. Ronald Reagan’s two terms added 15.9 million jobs, LBJ’s administration created 11.9 million private sector jobs and last (and least) George W Bush manage only 2.1 million in his 8 years.
