Employment concerns are one of the top issues for Americans. That is true as voters continue to pick which candidate they’d like to see get their party’s nomination.
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump is fond of saying that he would be the, “greatest jobs president” this country has ever seen. During a press conference recently, the Republican said the unemployment rate may be as high as, “42-percent.”
PolitiFact Florida heard the claim and decided to look at it a bit more closely.
PolitiFact writer Joshua Gillin said Trump’s claim received a PANTS ON FIRE rating.
PolitiFact reached out to the Trump Campaign in an attempt to ascertain where the candidate got that number. Staffers did not respond to the question.
Gillin said PolitiFact then took several different types of unemployment-related information in an attempt to reproduce Trump’s number, but did not get anywhere near the 42-percent.
“Now when we looked at it, depending on how you calculate it, you can come up with something as high as almost 15%. That’s about as bad as we could get in this figure,” Gillin said. “But 42%, there’s just no true support for that.”
Gillin went on to say the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics has been tracking this data for decades and the information does not lead to 42%. For that reason, PolitiFact gave Trump’s statement a PANTS ON FIRE rating.
SOURCES: U.S. unemployment at 42% Trump claims
- Donald Trump, comments at a media event, Sept. 29, 2015
- David Stockman, "The Warren Buffett Economy——Why Its Days Are Numbered (Part 4)," June 15, 2015
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey" (main index page), accessed Sept. 29, 2015
- U.S. Census Bureau, "Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Selected Age Groups by Sex for the United States, States, Counties, and Puerto Rico Commonwealth and Municipios: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2014," accessed Sept. 29, 2015
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Employment, college enrollment, and training of young male veterans and nonveterans during the recent recession," June 2012
- Social Security Administration, "Selected Data from Social Security's Disability Program," accessed Sept. 29, 2015
- National Center for Education Statistics, "Table 103.20: Percentage of the population 3 to 34 years old enrolled in school, by age group: Selected years, 1940 through 2013," accessed Sept. 29, 2015
- PolitiFact, "Donald Trump says 'real' unemployment rate is 18 to 20 percent," June 16, 2015
- PolitiFact, "Donald Trump says U.S. has 93 million people 'out of work,' but that's way too high," Aug. 31, 2015
- Washington Post Fact Checker, "Trump’s absurd claim that the ‘real’ unemployment rate is 42 percent," Aug. 21, 2015
- Email interview with Tara Sinclair, George Washington University economist and chief economist for Indeed, Sept. 29, 2015
- Email interview with Gary Burtless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Sept. 29, 2015