President Donald Trump often touts job growth on his watch as one of his top accomplishments in office. State Republican party organizations have followed his lead.
The West Virginia Republican Party tweeted on Aug. 8, 2018, that “the American economy is continuing its longest monthly streak of job growth in history, with 3.9 million jobs added since President Trump was elected.”
The tweet cited a White House web page as its source. But we dug into the numbers ourselves just to be sure.
The American economy is continuing its longest monthly streak of job growth in history, with 3.9 million jobs added since President Trump was elected. https://t.co/qmaW68IDdH #WVGOP
— WVGOP (@WVGOP) August 7, 2018
We’ll take the two parts of the tweet separately.
PolitiFact has previously confirmed that the United States is in the midst of its longest positive job growth streak in history — 94 months and counting. Here is a chart showing month-to-month employment increases or decreases since January 2008. There has not been a monthly decline since 2010.
The tweet fails to mention that most of these months of job growth occurred on President Barack Obama’s watch, which are noted in blue in the chart above. So Trump, whose months of job growth are noted in red starting in 2017, did not accomplish this feat on his own.
“3.9 million jobs (have been) added since President Trump was elected.”
We looked at official Bureau of Labor Statistics data and found that since November 2016, when Trump was elected, the economy has added about 3.9 million jobs. That’s what the tweet said.
Starting from this point, of course, includes two and a half months when Obama was still president. If you calculate the figure using January 2017 instead — when Trump actually took office — the number would be 3.4 million.
We’ll note that economists say presidents don’t deserve either full credit or full blame for employment trends on their watch. The president is not all-powerful on economic matters; broader factors, from the business cycle to changes in technology to demographic shifts, play major roles.
Our ruling
The West Virginia Republican Party said, “The American economy is continuing its longest monthly streak of job growth in history, with 3.9 million jobs added since President Trump was elected.”
Both parts of this claim are accurate, and while it’s worth noting that no president deserves full credit for economic achievements on their watch, the tweet was carefully worded and is not substantially misleading. We rate it True.
This report was written by a student at West Virginia University’s Reed College of Media as part of a semester-long collaboration between the college, Politifact and 100 Days in Appalachia. It was originally published by Politifact.
