We used this data to create a Trumponomics Report Card, which became the Bidenomics Report Card when Joe Biden took office in 2021. I left Yahoo in 2025 and took the Trumponomics project with me. Since then, graphic artist David Foster and I have created a new chartpack we update monthly and tweak regularly, to make it better.

Here’s how we put it together. Moody’s Analytics provides data every month on employment, manufacturing employment, inflation, incomes, stock-market performance and GDP growth. This data goes back to the Jimmy Carter presidency in the 1970s. We index the data to the start of each presidential term. So the index for each metric begins at 100 when the presidential term begins.

We then measure change from that starting point on a month-by-month basis. That allows us to do like-to-like comparisons at the same point in each presidency. We are not measuring absolute levels of employment or GDP, but the change that occurred once each president took office. That’s why each president starts at the same point in charts such as this one:

For five of the six metrics, a higher index number is better. If the index number for employment growth is 103, for instance, that means employment has grown by 3% since the start of the presidential term. The one exception is inflation, where a higher number is worse. An index number of 102 would indicate 2% inflation, which is better than an index number of 106, which would indicate 6% inflation. To make our inflation metric consistent with the others, we inverted it, so that a higher number indicates better performance on inflation, while a lower number indicates worse performance. This means that the index number in this one instance will typically be lower than 100. It would only higher than 100 if inflation were negative, which rarely happens.

To rank each president’s overall performance, we compute the rank in each category for the latest month, then sum the rankings on all six metrics for that month. There is no subjectivity involved. Excel’s rank function sorts the index values for each metric, then does the same for all six metrics combined, for the given month. That gives us the presidential rankings.

One note on our ranking technique. We originally ranked presidential terms by total number of index points in a given month. That produced a curious result. Barack Obama’s first term ranked No. 1 after 15 months, even though the economy back then was just emerging from the Great Recession and some economic numbers were still deteriorating. It turned out Obama’s top rank was entirely due to the monster stock-market rally that began in March of 2009. The Obama 1 stock index value was so large that it boosted his overall ranking to No. 1, even though he ranked last on employment and not much better on the other metrics. So we switched from ranking the aggregate index values to averaging out the category rankings, which removed that statistical bias. Obama 1 fell to the middle of the pack, which makes more sense.

We maintain two comparative datasets. Since we have data going back to the 1970s, we track Trump’s performance compared with 12 prior presidential terms. But presenting all that data is unwieldy. David Foster has an interactive graphic with all that data on his own web site, for anybody who wants to check it out.

It’s simpler to compare Trump with the last six presidential terms, which includes all the presidents of the 21^st century. That’s the data you’ll typically find here.

If our rankings don’t comport with the way you remember a certain presidential term, it’s probably because we’re cutting off the data before the term was complete, to stay consistent with where Trump is in his current term. Many people remember the Carter years as gloomy, for instance, but it was doing pretty well until a recession hit during his final year in office. The economy boomed during Ronald Reagan’s second term, but the first 15 months of data don’t show that yet. When we’re at the end of Trump’s term and have 48 months of data for each president, the full picture will emerge.

Our data does not imply that any given president or his policies directly caused the economic changes that happened during that term. The US economy is a huge and complex machine affected by thousands of factors. Presidents generally have less control over the economy than many voters think, which we point out routinely in our coverage of the economy.

Yet presidents get credit or blame for what happens in the economy under their watch, whether they deserve it or not. Our Trumponomics data helps explain why voters feel the way they do.

Yet the economy isn’t in a recession. It’s just muddling along. The Pinpoint Press tracks the Trump economy in six key categories, using data provided by Moody’s Analytics, and compares its performance with that of prior presidents going back to Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. We use data for the same point in each presidency, for apples-to-apples comparisons. So when Trump or his critics say he’s doing better or worse than Joe Biden or Barack Obama or any other president of the last 50 years, we can present the facts. (Here’s our full methodology.)

For simplicity, the following charts compare Trump’s second term with the six prior presidential terms of the 21st century. Graphics guru David Foster hosts an interactive graphic with data on all 13 presidents here.

Overall, Trump ranks 4th out of the last 7 presidents. That’s based on changes in employment, manufacturing employment, inflation, incomes, stock-market performance and GDP from the point each president took office through March of their second year in office.

Obama’s second term earns the top rank, mainly because the economy was finally picking up steam after the gloomy years of the Great Recession and its aftermath. Biden’s single term ranks second, in part because trillions of dollars of fiscal and monetary stimulus during the Covid pandemic were juicing the economy. Keep in mind that we’re only measuring the first 15 months of each term, not the entire 48.

The next six charts show how Trump compares with the six prior presidents on each of our metrics. On overall job growth, Trump ranks 5th out of 7. Job growth has slowed sharply since Trump took office.

Trump promised a blue-collar revival, but the economy has actually lost manufacturing jobs since Trump took office. The number of manufacturing jobs has been declining since the 1980s, and manufacturing employment has declined under most presidents. There was a gain in blue-collar jobs under Biden, largely because of the end of the Covid pandemic and massive amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus.

Trump ranks 5th out of 7 on inflation, which is a particular irritant for many Americans because Trump vowed to get the high inflation of the Biden presidency under control. Since higher inflation is worse and lower inflation is better, the inflation numbers in the chart below are inverted so that a higher number is better, as in all the other charts. Trump is doing better than Biden on inflation at the same point in each term, but the war he launched against Iran on February 28 has sent oil and gasoline prices sharply higher. More inflation could be coming as producers pass their own higher costs onto consumers.

The stock market has done well under Trump, but it still ranks only 5th out of 7. The stock market generally rises, and the S&P 500 was up under 6 of the last 7 presidents at the 15-month point. Gains were highest during Obama’s first term, again, because the stock market bottomed out shortly after Obama took office, and then went on a tear.

Income growth under Trump is 3rd best out of 7. That’s fine, but many Americans don’t feel like their purchasing power is improving, because inflation bites.

Trump ranks 2nd out of 7 on GDP growth. Only Biden did better. But Trump also presides over a K-shaped economy in which the wealthy are doing great—and keeping the whole economy afloat—while a much larger group is struggling. That’s why Trump’s approval rating on the economy stinks, even though the economy is doing okay.

Here’s a summary of where Trump stands on each of those six metrics.

For those who want to go deep, the final graphic ranks each of the last 13 presidential terms. Bill Clinton’s second term was the best, with the advent of the internet and digital technology fueling a broad-based boom. Clinton was also the last president to balance the federal budget.🙄

We update this data at least once a month, usually around the time the monthly jobs report comes out. The data is indexed to the beginning of each presidential term, so it shows how the economy changed from the time each president took office. That allows apples-to-apples comparisons among the presidents.

The charts below show the Trump economy compared with other 21st century presidents, starting with George W. Bush in 2001. For data going back to the 1970s, check out the interactive graphic.

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