{"id":5278,"date":"2026-08-24T22:38:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T22:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5278"},"modified":"2026-08-24T22:38:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T22:38:36","slug":"fact-checker-dismantles-one-of-trumps-favorite-brags-as-meaningless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5278","title":{"rendered":"Fact checker dismantles one of Trump\u2019s favorite brags as\u00a0‘meaningless’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump is fond of one particular brag to try and boast about his economic record, but as a new piece from CNN explained, that brag is a sham because, in practice, the statistic he cites is “nearly meaningless.”<\/p>\n

Read more DC residents have a \u2018superpower\u2019 to \u2018sabotage\u2019 Trump\u2019s failing prosecutions<\/a><\/p>\n

Writing for CNN’s “Facts First” fact-checking initiative on Monday, reporter Daniel Dale highlighted Trump’s recent attempt to tout a “nearly meaningless fact he portrayed as a major accomplishment” when pressed about his cratering approval ratings on the economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll see a poll,\u201d Trump said at a rally in South Carolina, \u201cAnd it\u2019ll say, \u2018Trump is at 44 percent on the economy.\u2019 How can it be at 44? We have more people working now than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added later in the same rally speech, “Remember when I say, and I\u2019ll say it again and again: There are more people working today in the United States of America than at any time in the history of our country,” and emphasized it a third time for good measure. Despite Trump’s fondness for this statistic, Dale explained why it is so useless as a gauge for how well the economy is doing, and wondered if the president is actually aware of this discrepancy.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s not clear whether Trump is genuinely unaware this fact is insignificant or whether he is knowingly hyping an insignificant fact for political gain,” Dale wrote. “Regardless, touting the fact ‘again and again’ is unlikely to do anything for his economic approval \u2014 because the fact tells us almost nothing about the state of the economy. The number of people working in the US generally rises over time simply because the population rises over time. With the exception of recessions, like those caused by the financial crisis of 2008 or the COVID-19 crisis of 2020, the number of employed people tends to just get higher as the years pass.”<\/p>\n

He added later: “Every US president since at least 1948, when modern federal data collection began, could have accurately said at some point during their tenure that more people were working in the U.S. than ever before. That clearly isn\u2019t because each of these presidents was presiding over a pristine economy.”<\/p>\n

Read more Republicans furious as Trump\u2019s budget director goes \u2018rogue\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Dale further cited a recent analysis from economist Justin Wolfers, who stressed that “There are more Americans working because there are more Americans. <\/em>That\u2019s the entire analysis.”<\/p>\n

Dale argued that the cost of living in the U.S. has been far more impactful on the grim sense voters have of the economy, not the employment rate. It hardly matters if enough people have jobs if their wages do not go as far as they used to. Ratios comparing the employment numbers to the overall population paint a picture that it much more in line with public sentiment.<\/p>\n

“But even if you\u2019re looking only at jobs, there are much better ways to gauge the situation than the statistic Trump keeps citing. These other metrics show his second-term economy is far from historically strong,” Dale explained. “You can look, for example, at the employment-population ratio, which measures the percentage of the population ages 16 and over that is employed. It\u2019s down from 60.1% in January 2025, the month of Trump\u2019s second inauguration, to 58.9 percent in July 2026 \u2014 lower than it was during the entirety of Joe Biden\u2019s last three years as president.”<\/p>\n

He added: “The pace of job creation has slowed dramatically in Trump\u2019s second term compared with Biden\u2019s term \u2014 even if you ignore the early part of Biden\u2019s tenure, when the economy was still bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels. The US gained a seasonally adjusted 2.2 million jobs in Biden\u2019s final 18 months in office, from August 2023 through January 2025. Conversely, the US gained a seasonally adjusted 590,000 jobs in the 18 months from February 2025, Trump\u2019s first full month back in office, through July 2026.”<\/p>\n

Read more The humiliating depth of Trump\u2019s surrender was just revealed: analysis<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump is fond of one particular brag to try and boast about his economic record, but that brag is a sham because, in practice, the statistic he cites is “nearly meaningless.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFact checker dismantles one of Trump\u2019s favorite brags as\u00a0'meaningless' - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5278\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fact checker dismantles one of Trump\u2019s favorite brags as\u00a0'meaningless' - 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