David Doney Profile picture
Armchair economist, sci-fi fan, impressed by good data viz. Deep-state operator. Node in the vast left wing conspiracy. Facts have a liberal bias.

Jan 5, 2025, 16 tweets

🧵President Biden's economic legacy, in charts. First, the unemployment rate at 4.1% on average is the lowest (best) among the last 14 presidents, for FRED data back to 1948. 1/

The real (infl-adj) hourly wages for production & non-supervisory workers (the bottom 80% of the private sector) averaged higher under Biden than the last 11 presidents. In other words, workers had more purchasing power under Biden than other presidents, despite inflation. 2/

Taking the first two charts together, Biden has the best combination of unemployment and real wages among the last 11 presidents. This is the best reading on the "Prosperity Matrix" of any modern president. 3/

You can see the significant improvement in the unemployment rate here, which fell from 6.4% when Biden started to 4.1% as of October '24, the latest FRED data at the county level. Are you better off than 4 years ago? Obviously. 4/

Americans also became the richest ever in terms of real (infl-adj) net worth, across the wealth distribution, in early 2022 under Biden. We're still way above 2019. This was from big gains in stocks and housing, plus pandemic savings and stimulus. 5/

About 7 million more are working than pre-pandemic peak, which was regained in June 2022. Even if you start measuring Biden there, and compare that to Trump pre-pandemic, Biden has had much faster job creation. 6/

Biden's perfectly-timed immigrant surge is projected by CBO (the most credible source available) to add $65,000 per household to income over a decade ($9T extra GDP), while reducing deficits nearly $1 trillion. 7/
cbo.gov/publication/60…

Real GDP growth under Biden was a robust 3.0%, slightly faster than Trump pre-pandemic. GDP had regained it's pre-pandemic peak by the time Biden started. 8/

A secret about inflation is that it helps debtors with fixed payments, like homeowners and Uncle Sam. The debt to GDP ratio has fallen from the Trump peak, as nominal GDP has grown faster than debt. 9/
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYGFGDQ…

It's obvious we're better off than 4 years ago, as the pandemic recovery was still underway. But what about relative to 2019 pre-pandemic? Well, in fact most measures even adjusted for inflation were better in 2022 & 2023 than 2019. 10/

Looking at it another way, here is the cumulative growth in several key measures of household prosperity compared to 2019 and inflation. 11/
fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_i…

Biden's immigration surge and infrastructure law (with its 60,000+ projects) have helped setup our next decade for economic success. He raised taxes on the rich and corporations via IRA. Here is a thread on his many legislative achievements. 12/

Violent crime rate has fallen under Biden, to below the 2019 level and far below the 2020 Trump Spike. 13/
cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#

Biden's support for the ACA helped reduce the number of uninsured to a record low by 2022 in both $ and % terms, for data back to 1990's. /14
whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…

People upset about inflation should realize it was global, wages outgrew it vs. pre-pandemic (we had more purchasing 2021-2024 than 2019), and that inflation is the Fed's job. The U.S. had comparable inflation yet faster growth than other advanced economies. 15/

The media worked incredibly hard to help Trump, creating fake crises in immigration, housing, inflation, and crime. It will be interesting to see how they negatively spin Biden's incredible record. 16/END

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