Trump's Economy: Year 1 Summary

Welcome to the 2025 economic recap, where President Trump has officially graded his own performance as an "A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus." If only our math teacher accepted that many pluses! While the President is out there claiming we’ve entered a "new golden age," is it actually that good? There are too many things to cover here - and a lot of it honestly depends on where you stand on certain issues - but we'll lay out the facts on some key things that affect our paychecks the most and let you decide!

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Here are Five Fast Facts on Trump's economy in year 1:

1. 🤔 Job Growth - It was shockingly weak - only 181k jobs added all year. That’s the slowest job growth outside of a recession in over 20 years. The context is that foreign-born workers lost 452k jobs while native born workers gained 2 million. The home team wins! 

2. 🎶 Unemployment - This stayed low at 4.3% even with slow job growth because there were fewer immigrants, fewer government bureaucrats, and fewer people entering the workforce, meaning there was less competition for fewer jobs. It’s like fewer people showing up to musical chairs, so fewer people lose.

3. 📈 Inflation - It dropped to 2.4%, which is great...but prices still felt high. Basically, it's not getting worse now, but those years of higher-than-a-kite inflation are now baked into prices. Yay…

4. 🤷 Wages - Under Biden, wages jumped up by a massive 19.7%...but prices went up by almost 22% (driven by over 9% inflation), so that math ain't mathin'. Now, wages are up only about 3.7%, but they are at least beating inflation!

5. 🏠 Housing - The average household had to spend about 42% of their income on housing, which means buying a home felt like trying to buy a castle with piggy bank money.

🔥Bottom line: Manufacturing has struggled (boo), economic growth has been mixed due to the shutdown (meh), the federal deficit is way down (yay), foreign investment is way up (yay), and the stock market went absolutely nuts (in a good way). So yeah, it's safe to say it’s a mixed bag! The reality is that the American economy is absolutely massive, and there are so many forces pushing and pulling on it that it can be hard to make sense of it, but context must be part of the consideration.

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In the end, if you're not a fan of Trump, you probably think he's ruining a lot of things; if you are a fan of Trump, you probably think we're turning the corner. Honestly, we should hope that things get better no matter who's in the Oval Office; that means better paychecks for all of us, right?

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What do you think about all this?

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