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- Homicides have dropped 13 percent, but gun sales have surged.
- The economy has added more than 9 million jobs, and the jobless rate has dropped to below the historical median.
- The number of long-term unemployed Americans has dropped by 614,000 under Obama, but it is still 761,000 higher than at the start of the Great Recession.
- Corporate profits are up 166 percent; real weekly wages are up 3.4 percent.
- There are 15 million fewer people who lack health insurance.
- Wind and solar power have nearly tripled, and now account for more than 5 percent of U.S. electricity.
- The federal debt has more than doubled — rising 116 percent — and big annual deficits have continued.
According to the FBI’s most recent annual compilation of crime reports published Dec. 14, there were 2,216 fewer murders and deaths from nonnegligent manslaughter in the U.S. during 2014 than in 2008, the year before Obama first took office. That’s a 13 percent reduction in the number of homicides.
The economy has added 851,000 jobs since we published our last report. As of December, the number of total nonfarm jobs stands 9,265,000 higher than when Obama first took office.
That compares with the nearly 23 million jobs gained during the booming years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and the fewer than 1.3 million added during President George W. Bush’s eight years, which were plagued by two recessions.
Meanwhile the unemployment rate went down again, to 5.0 percent. It’s now 2.8 percentage points lower than it was in January 2009, when the president first took office in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Historically, the jobless rate is significantly lower than it has been most of the time since 1948. The historical median is 5.6 percent.
The labor force participation rate, which is the portion of the civilian population that is either employed or currently looking for work, ticked upward since our last report, to 62.6 percent in December. But it is still 3.1 percentage points lower than when Obama took office.
Contrary to many of Obama’s critics, however, that decline is due mostly to factors outside the control of any president — factors such as the post-World War II baby boomers reaching retirement age. Survey data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in December show that those outside the labor force in 2014 said their reasons for not working were retirement (44 percent), illness or disability (19 percent), school attendance (18 percent) or home responsibilities (15 percent). Only 3 percent said they couldn’t find a job, or gave some other reason.
The number of job openings has declined only slightly since our last report, when it had peaked at the highest level in the 15 years that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking it.
The latest figures from the BLS show there were 5,431,000 jobs open in November, down 4 percent from the revised peak figure recorded in July, but still up 97 percent over the month Obama took office. The number of job openings now has exceeded 5 million for 10 consecutive months, after being below 5 million every month since January 2001.
Corporate profits have soared under Obama. After-tax profits were running at an annual rate of just under $1.8 trillion in the July-October quarter of last year, the most recent figures available. That’s down somewhat from the previous quarter — which was a record. But still 166 percent higher than in the quarter just before Obama entered office.
That quarter’s profits were unusually low, ravaged by the Great Recession. But even compared with the best quarter prior to his taking office, which was the third quarter of 2006, after-tax profits are up 27 percent.
But despite recent losses, stockholders have done quite well under Obama. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 139 percent higher at the close on Jan. 11 than it was the day Obama took office. Other stock indexes show similarly robust gains. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has also more than doubled, rising 106 percent during Obama’s tenure, and the NASDAQ Composite index has tripled, rising 222 percent.
Overall inflation in consumer prices has remained moderate over Obama’s more than six-and-a-half years in office, rising by only 12.4 percent between January 2009 and November, the most recent month for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the Consumer Price Index.
The average yearly rise under Obama of 1.9 percent is less than half the post-World War II average, according to BLS figures. Between 1946 and 2008 the average yearly rise in the CPI was 4 percent, measured from December to December. In the most recent 12 months, the CPI has gone up only a little more than 0.2 percent.
The national average price of regular gasoline sank to just under $2 a gallon last week ($1.996), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s a 32-cent drop since our last report, and the lowest point since March 2009.
The recent low inflation has helped the buying power of weekly paychecks. The BLS measure of average weekly earnings for all workers, adjusted for inflation and seasonal factors, is 3.4 percent higher in November than it was when Obama first took office.
The number of people receiving food stamps dropped again since our last report, by nearly 142,000. As of October, the most recent month on record, nearly 45.4 million Americans were still receiving the food aid, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
That’s 5.1 percent lower than the record level set in December 2012, but still nearly 42 percent higher than it was when Obama took office in 2009.
But as we noted when Republicans called Obama the “Food Stamp President,” 14.7 million people were added to the food-stamp rolls during George W. Bush’s time in office. By comparison, the net gain under Obama now stands at just under 13.4 million — and it’s slowly declining as the economy improves.
The number of people lacking health insurance continued to decline since our last report, according to the most recent data from the National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
U.S. Crude Oil Production – Despite recent declines, U.S. crude oil production has nearly doubled under Obama.
Meanwhile, U.S. reliance on imported oil has been cut by more than half. Under Obama, as of the fourth quarter of 2015, net imports were down 62 percent.
Electricity generated by large-scale wind and solar power in the most recent 12 months on record (ending in October) was 273 percent higher than the total for 2008.
The U.S. government’s debt owed to the public has more than doubled. It is now more than $13.6 trillion, an increase of 116 percent since Obama first took office.
And the debt also has grown dramatically even when measured as a percentage of the growing economy, from 52 percent of gross domestic product at the end of fiscal year 2009 to just under 74 percent at the end of fiscal 2015, according to the most recent estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Spending – Federal spending, however, has increased much less. Total federal outlays in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 last year totaled just under $3.69 trillion, according to finalU.S. Treasury figures. That’s just 4.8 percent above the total outlays for fiscal 2009, which was well underway when Obama took office.
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