The job market was remarkably strong before the coronavirus pandemic hit earlier this year, with the unemployment rate falling to a 50-year low. Even so, President Trump’s promise to be the “greatest jobs president that God ever created” was looking a little iffy, with the job creation trend running a bit lower than the one established during the Obama administration in the wake of the Great Recession.
“Trump’s signature legislative achievement, the 2017 tax reform bill, reduced taxes for the wealthy and corporations, but it didn’t translate into big gains in good jobs for average Americans,” Bloomberg’s Reade Pickert and Catarina Saraiva wrote Tuesday.
The quality of the jobs being created during the last three years had fallen, Pickert and Saraiva said, and Trump’s trade war with China depressed growth in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.
All of that is water under the bridge at this point though, after the coronavirus wiped out years of gains in just a few months. “Now, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump heads into the November election on track to be the first U.S. leader since World War II to oversee a net loss of jobs during a four-year term,” the reporters said.
