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... Why it matters: Memories fade, but the numbers can give a clearer view of the economic conditions that prevailed the last time Trump was president. The pandemic was a stark dividing line.
- - - The pre-pandemic Trump economy really was terrific by nearly every measure. But at the start of 2021 when Biden took office, the U.S. economy was more dismal than we may allow ourselves to recall.
- - - An open debate is whether Biden's approach to dealing with it -- the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021 -- was necessary to achieve the rapid rebound that occurred, or if that would have happened anyway and ARP unnecessarily fueled inflation.
Flashback: This time five years ago, the U.S. economy was so good that the New York Times was sending economics writers to New Hampshire to try to suss out how Democrats running for president would deal with this dilemma.
- - - The unemployment rate averaged 3.7% in 2019.
- - - Inflation was running below the Fed's 2% target and average hourly earnings were rising more than 3%, meaning American workers' real wages were increasing at a comfortable clip.
- - - With inflation well-contained, the Fed cut rates three times that year, a "mid-cycle adjustment," as chair Jerome Powell called it, that seemed poised to keep the economy on its happy growth trajectory.
Yes, but: By the end of 2020, it was a very different story. The pandemic was still raging, with deaths peaking the first week of January 2021.
- - - The unemployment rate stood at 6.7% in December 2020, the month before Biden took office. There were 9.3 million fewer jobs that month than a year earlier, and Q4 GDP was 1.1% below 2019 levels. ...
