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Ten Years of Select Economic Data in Graphs

A pet peeve of mine as an economist is giving too much credit to the current quarterback , er…President for [economic] wins and too much blame for [economic] losses.  To give a better picture of what's going on with the economy, here are some graphs of the past decade of select economic data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve.  

I'll leave it to others to draw conclusions.

1) Median Household Income in the U.S. 2007-2017:

Median Household Income

2) The Dow Jones Industrial Average 2007-2017:
Median Household Income

3) Initial Jobless Claims 2007-2017:
Median Household Income

4) Consumer Price Index 1950-2017:
Median Household Income

5) Gross Domestic Product 2007-2017
Median Household Income

5b) GDP Growth Rate (quarterly–seasonally adjusted) 2007-2017:

GDP Growth Rates

6) Unemployment 2007-2017:

Unemployment rate6b) Labor Force Participation Rate 2007-2017

Labor Force Participation

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  1. jroumasset Avatar
    jroumasset

    GDP looks a little better for Trump if you plot growth rate instead of dollars, although the break shows up around January, meaning you have to rely on expectations for a causal relationship.

    Reply
  2. Tim Haab Avatar
    Tim Haab

    I’ll have to check that out. The DJIA definitely shows a Trump bump.

    Reply
  3. Tim Haab Avatar
    Tim Haab

    Jim,
    I added the GDP growth rate (not sure I see a Trump Bump here), and labor force participation (looks like a Trump Bump here–or at least a Trump Flattening).

    Reply
  4. rjs Avatar
    rjs

    whatever Trump bump there was in GDP is going to get whacked when the revisions to international trade data released last week are incorporated:
    http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/october-trade-deficit-86-revisions-whack-3rd-quarter-gdp-6123
    moreover, more than a quarter of the jump in 3rd quarter GDP was inventory building, and October data looks like that will all be given back in the 4th quarter…
    all that said, there’s not a lot in GDP i can see that one could attribute to any president…the biggest contributor to growth in recent months has been auto sales, as people replaced their insured vehicles that were damaged by flooding in southeast Texas…

    Reply
  5. John Whitehead Avatar
    John Whitehead

    Revised first sentence:
    A pet peeve of mine as an economist is when the Quarterback [President] takes too much credit for [economic] wins and does not accept much blame for [economic] losses.

    Reply
  6. John Whitehead Avatar
    John Whitehead

    History suggests there will be some sort of recession during the next 3 years. There are two important people (Obama, Yellen) who will not be at fault but might get blamed by certain others (Trump, Mnuchin, McConnell, Ryan, Hannity, etc).

    Reply

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