Is President Trump really good for job growth?

President Trump is eager to promote the strength of jobs numbers under his command, but how is job growth really playing out? With the 2018 election imminent, we explored the relationship between job growth and voter preference.

Using our job data we calculated the change in job openings by state leading up to the past two elections. Before the 2016 election, “Red states” (majority voted for Donald Trump) saw job openings increase by 3% in the 10 months prior to voting. At that time “Blue states” (majority voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016) saw job openings increase by only 1.6%.

Interestingly, the opposite is true for 2018. “Red states” are now experiencing a 2% decline in job openings for the last 10 months. While job growth in “Blue states” is steady, at 1.5%.

Looking at the country as a whole, job growth has fallen since Trump became president. In Trump’s first 22 months in office, 4.1 million jobs were added to the economy, less than the 4.8 million jobs that were added in the last 22 months of Obama’s last term.