Since the #JobsReport just came out, let's use this data to take yet another look at the 2020 election and Trump's Big Lie.
US Presidents don't usually see a net loss of jobs in one term. Almost never. But it happened with Trump.
When it happens, it's not good for re-election.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps monthly jobs reports going back as far as 1939.
data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES…
Which means that we have the full set of jobs reports for every Presidential term since Roosevelt's third term which started in 1941.
There have been 20 total four-year Presidential terms between that third Roosevelt term beginning in 1941 and Trump's term ending in 2021. All those jobs reports are online.
13 of those terms were held by a President who was running to be elected to an additional term in office.
Now if you add all of the monthly job reports that were compiled from each of those Presidents' first full month in office (February, right after they were inaugurated) until right before the election (October the year of the next election), only twice has there been a net loss.
By October, 2004, as George W. Bush was running for re-election, the US had a net loss of 251,000 jobs over the course of his term in office.
Bush ended his first term with a very bare gain of jobs over the course of the first term as the 12/04 and 1/05 reports were good.
Bush ended up winning re-election in 2004. But it was a close call. A single state, Ohio, determined the winner. And Bush won by the slimmest electoral and popular vote margin of any President who won re-election in this whole time span (at least since Roosevelt).
By October, 2020, as Trump was seeking a second term (and as he was in the hospital battling for his life from COVID), the jobs story was much worse. With the recession, the US had lost 3 million jobs in Trump's term by that point in time. 12 times the number Bush was down by.
Trump lost the election of 2020. The only other President in the history of the BLS stats who had a net loss of jobs by right before the election was Bush, whose losses were much less and who won by a very slim margin.
Being down 3 million jobs doesn't help you win re-election.
Now as you can see from the graphic, gaining a lot of jobs doesn't necessarily get you re-elected either. Carter oversaw the second-most jobs added to US payrolls in his term. But there was a recession in 1980 when he sought re-election. For many reasons, he lost.
Ford was in the middle of the pack in this list in terms of jobs created. The US was in a recession the year before the 1976 election. And Ford, unlike every other President, was never elected either President or Vice President. He lost.
George H.W. Bush, after winning a war and at one point in time having an 89% approval rating, did not have a net loss of jobs at the time of the 1992 election which he lost. He faced not only a vibrant competitor in Bill Clinton but had a strong third party candidate, Ross Perot.
But George H.W. Bush lost his bid for a second term. And he took the loss like a man. He didn't spend the rest of his life lying to whoever would listen that he really won. And he didn't incite a bunch of crazed followers into attacking the US Capitol. Miss those days.
As voters were deciding whether or not Donald J. Trump would get another term in office, the US had lost a net 3 million jobs over the course of his Presidency; most of the jobs were lost just in the previous seven months. There was a recession the year of the election.
And in addition to the dire jobs situation, Trump also had the lowest average Gallup approval ratings in the nine decade history of that poll. His highest ever Gallup poll (49%) was considerably lower than for any other President.
And yet some are like "I don't believe he lost."
Trump is the only President since Herbert Hoover to have had a net loss of jobs occur during his term (George W. Bush managed to break even for his first term).
He was also the first since Hoover to have his party lose the White House, House and the Senate in the span of a four year Presidential term.
One of only four US Presidents in history to never win more votes than any of his leading competitors in a US Presidential Election.
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