Summary
So far, under President Donald Trump’s second term:
- Job growth became sluggish, with only 776,000 jobs created. The unemployment rate edged up to 4.2%, still historically low.
- Inflation worsened. Consumer prices are up 5.4%. Gasoline is up 38%.
- Wages just barely rose faster than inflation, as measured since Trump was sworn in. But they’ve decreased this year.
- The economy grew 2.2% in the second quarter, continuing a steady rate of growth.
- Consumer sentiment remains low.
- Home prices increased 6.2%.
- The trade deficit for the most recent 12 months is down 10.4% compared with 2024, but it has risen substantially in the last two months on record.
- The number of apprehensions at the U.S. border with Mexico decreased about 91%. The number of refugee admissions dropped by nearly the same percentage.
- The percentage of the population lacking health insurance was statistically unchanged in 2025, according to two government reports.
- The number of people receiving federal food assistance decreased by 6 million.
- Median household income rose in 2025, while the official poverty rate declined. An alternative measure of poverty that factors in government assistance showed no meaningful change.
- Corporate profits continued to rise; 2025 was the 10th consecutive year that profits increased.
- The S&P 500 went up 28.6%.
- The violent crime and murder rates in 2025 continued to decline, dropping by the largest percentages since the FBI began collecting nationwide data in 1936.
- The publicly held debt is up about 12.8%.
Analysis
Ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, Trump has implored his supporters in rallies across the country to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” In our latest quarterly update for this series, we provide the best available data on how the U.S. has fared under Trump’s second term as voters head to the polls.
This report includes new information on household income and poverty, statistics released by the Census Bureau last month. And our section on crime focuses on the FBI’s annual report for 2025, published in August.
We’ll continue to post quarterly updates for the remainder of Trump’s presidency, as we’ve done for past presidents since we launched this series in 2012. (All of our articles on Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, as well as Trump’s first and second terms are available on our website.)
We make no judgment on how much credit or blame the president should receive for these metrics. And we leave it to readers to form their own opinions on whether the indicators are positive, negative or neither.
Jobs and Unemployment
Job growth slowed markedly and unemployment crept up during Trump’s second term. Manufacturing jobs declined at first but bounced back a bit this year.
Employment — Employment growth became sluggish during Trump’s first 20 months in office.
The most recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show an increase of only 776,000 in total nonfarm employment between January 2025 and September 2026.
The total went up nearly three times faster before, rising by 2,613,000 during the final 20 months of President Joe Biden’s administration, even after the BLS revised Biden’s figures downward in February as a result of its annual “benchmarking” study.
Some of the sluggishness under Trump is due to the president’s deliberate slashing of the federal workforce. Federal government employment has fallen by 328,000, or 10.9%, since he took office.
Looking only at the private sector — excluding federal, state and local government workers — 1,006,000 jobs were added during Trump’s term so far. But even that is far less than the 1,778,000 private-sector jobs added in the preceding 20 months.
In August 2025, after the BLS reported only 73,000 jobs had been gained the prior month, Trump called the figures “rigged” and “phony” and fired the BLS commissioner. But the numbers, on average, have been even worse since then. The average monthly gain in jobs during Trump’s second term so far has been only 39,000.
Manufacturing Jobs — Last year, Trump said that “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country,” as he announced sweeping new tariffs on what he called “Liberation Day,” April 2, 2025.
But that hasn’t happened, at least not yet. The economy continued to shed manufacturing jobs for months after Trump’s tariff announcement, losing another 82,000 by December 2025, when the drain ended.
This year the economy has added 72,000 manufacturing jobs — up 0.6% from the bottom. That brings the tally during Trump’s first 20 months to a net loss of 21,000. If the current upward trend continues, we may be reporting a small net gain in our next quarterly report.
Labor Force Participation — The labor force participation rate declined in Trump’s second term, dropping from 62.6% in January 2025 to 61.8% as of September.
That’s well below the rate when Trump attacked the Biden administration in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. “The labor force participation is the worst in many, many decades,” he said then. “That’s the number that you have to look at.” That was August 2022, when the rate was 62.3%.
The rate is the portion of the population over age 16 that is working or seeking work. It generally has been in a long decline as the population ages and workers retire.
Unemployment — The unemployment rate has ticked up slightly under Trump but remains historically low.
It was 4.0% in January 2025 and most recently was 4.2% in September. Both figures are well below the median rate for all months since 1948, which is 5.5%.
Job Openings — The number of unfilled job openings has declined by 352,000, or 4.7% under Trump, as of the last day of August.
Meanwhile, the number of people officially listed as unemployed and seeking work rose by 244,000, or 3.6%, as of September.
So there are now 7.11 million unemployed job-seekers and 7.08 million job openings.
Wages and Inflation
Inflation worsened during Trump’s tenure. Lately prices have been rising faster than weekly paychecks.
CPI — Trump hasn’t yet delivered on his campaign promise to reduce inflation.
In the 12 months before Trump took office, the Consumer Price Index, the most commonly cited measure of inflation, rose 3.0%. And in the most recent BLS report, the 12-month increase was 3.7%.
Over Trump’s entire first 20 months in office, the CPI went up 5.4%, pushed up most recently by his war on Iran, which sent fuel prices soaring.
Before the war the price of gasoline had been a bright spot for the president. In January the national average price for regular gasoline at the pump was down to $2.78 a gallon, from $3.11 the week he was sworn in for his second term.
But then the average spiked as high as $4.50, during the week ending May 11, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The average has remained over $4 nearly every week since. It was $4.28 the week ending Oct. 19. That’s 38% higher than it was when Trump took office.
Highway diesel prices hit a record high of $6.53 per gallon the week ending Sept. 21. More recently they edged down to $6.28 the week ending Oct. 19, but that was still 69% higher than the week Trump took office.
Overall inflation is much higher than the Federal Reserve would like, prompting the central bank to raise interest rates Sept. 16 rather than lowering them as the president had been demanding.
The bank is aiming for inflation of 2% a year as measured by its preferred metric, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. When Trump took office, the 12-month increase in the PCE was 2.5%. But the most recent report put the 12-month increase at 3.4% in August . (PCE figures take longer to collect than the CPI, but the Fed prefers the measure because it is more comprehensive and adjusts more quickly to consumers’ buying habits.)
Wages — During Trump’s second term workers’ pay rose even faster than prices, but just barely. And lately the opposite has been true.
The average weekly earnings of all private-sector workers, adjusted for inflation, rose 0.94% during Trump’s first 20 months. That’s not much better than in the preceding 20 months, when inflation-adjusted paychecks rose 0.86%.
However, all the gains under Trump happened in 2025, and nearly half have slipped away this year. During Trump’s first 12 months inflation-adjusted wages rose 1.83%, but since then real weekly earnings have gone down 0.87%.
Economic Growth
The U.S. economy continues to grow at a steady rate – despite a negative public perception of Trump’s economic policies.
The nation’s real gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 2.2% in the second quarter of 2026, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported last month. At the same time, the BEA announced it had revised its first quarter estimate upward to 2.5%.
In an Oct. 2 commentary after the release of the latest GDP estimates, U.S. Bank described the economy as exhibiting “solid momentum” this year. “Consumer spending and business investment remain the main sources of growth,” U.S. Bank said.
As of Oct. 20, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model was projecting growth of 3.5% for the third quarter. The BEA’s first estimate for the third quarter, known as the Advance Estimate, will be released Oct. 29.
The growth comes despite what Philip N. Jefferson, a vice chair of the Federal Reserve, called “a cascade of shocks” buffeting the economy, “including an energy shock, a massive AI infrastructure buildout, and significant changes in trade policy.”
The U.S. war with Iran has increased the cost of energy, most visibly in the gasoline prices paid by Americans at the pump.
In an Oct. 1 speech, Jefferson said he expects the economy will show “continued resilience,” but he warned that “inflation is too high” and poses a risk to economic growth. (See more about inflation rates in our “Wages and Inflation” section above.)
On the same day that it raised its benchmark interest rate to help tame inflation, the Federal Open Market Committee – the Federal Reserve’s policymaking arm – released its latest economic projections. The Fed said it expects real GDP to remain steady over the next four years, including a 2.3% increase for the full year in 2026 and 2.4% in 2027.
Consumer Sentiment
Consumer sentiment — as measured by the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers — remains stubbornly low.
After reaching a record low in May at 44.8, the university’s Index of Consumer Sentiment for October was largely unchanged at 46.3, according to the preliminary figure.
“Frustration over cost-of-living continues to mount, as consumers across the political spectrum believe that the trajectory of the economy has weakened since the beginning of the year,” Joanne W. Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers, said when releasing the preliminary October data on Oct. 9.
As of Oct. 9, consumer sentiment is 25.4 points lower than it was in January 2025, when it was 71.7 as Trump took office for a second time.
Consumer sentiment in October is also far below its lowest point during Trump’s first term – which occurred in April 2020, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, it was 71.8.
The university will release the final October data on Oct. 23.
In its most recent Consumer Confidence Survey, the Conference Board — a research organization with more than 2,000 member companies — reported that consumer confidence “deteriorated notably in September, following two prior months of softening.”
The Conference Board will issue its October report on Oct. 27.
Home Prices
Home prices have slightly increased under Trump.
But lately home sales have slowed and mortgage rates have gone up, “giving buyers improved negotiating power,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said when releasing September’s home sales and prices.
“It is a great time to be a buyer,” Yun said.
The preliminary national median price of an existing, single-family home sold in September was $422,700, according to the National Association of Realtors.
That’s 6.2% higher than it was in January 2025, when Biden left office, and just 1.2% higher than a year ago.
Yun said August and September “marked the two slowest months for home sales this year” and higher mortgage rates are “making things tougher” for sellers.
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate on Sept. 16, and it may do so again. That has resulted in higher mortgage rates.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.40% as of Oct. 15, according to Freddie Mac. That’s up nearly 1% from our last report, when the mortgage rate was 6.55% as of July 16.
“Naturally, there will be fewer buyers who can qualify for a mortgage at a higher interest rate,” Yun said.
Mortgage rates are now higher than they were when Trump took office. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 7.04% as of Jan. 16, 2025 — days before Trump returned to the White House for a second term.
“Home sellers need to be realistic about local market conditions, which could require price discounts and other incentives to attract buyers,” Yun said.
Existing home sales and prices for October are scheduled to be released Nov. 12.
Trade Deficit
The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2026 is on track for a decrease from last year. But it’s still unclear if the annual figure will end up being lower than the trade deficit the year before Trump took office.
During the most recent 12 months ending in August, the trade deficit was $793.8 billion, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s 10.4% lower than the annual trade deficit of $885.5 billion in 2024. But the deficit has been rising in recent months.
Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in an Oct. 6 X post that “the deficit is on a train ride straight up right now,” referring to the trade figures for July and August. For the first time since early 2025, the trade deficit topped $100 billion in August. The BEA noted an increase that month in imported oil, gold and semiconductors/computers.
Setser said that “the US needs the world’s imports to meet its firms desire to invest in AI while its consumers consume a high level of current income.”
In the first year of Trump’s second term, the trade deficit went up, despite his policy of imposing tariffs in an effort to reduce the deficit. The annual deficit in 2025 was nearly $932 billion, partly because of historically large monthly deficits in the first three months of that year, as importers bought more goods to avoid Trump’s planned tariffs on imported products. The deficit exceeded $100 billion in each of those three months.
Under Biden, the trade deficit had gone up 39%.
Immigration
The number of immigrants attempting to illegally cross the southern border has dramatically decreased since Trump took office. The number of immigrants apprehended crossing the border over the last 12 months ending in August was down nearly 91% compared with the last 12 months under President Joe Biden.
“We inherited the worst border in American history by far, and we turned it into the strongest and most secure border in the history of our country,” Trump said at a political rally in Kentucky on Oct. 17. “And in the past, a number just came out a couple of days ago, in the past 17 months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted into the United States through our southern [border].”
The U.S. experienced historically high illegal immigration in the first three years under Biden, before he initiated some emergency policies to curb illegal border crossings. Over the entirety of the Biden administration, Border Patrol agents encountered more than 7 million people (7,383,107) attempting to cross the border illegally (though about a quarter of them in FY 2020 and 2021 were repeat offenders). That’s nearly 265% higher than during the four previous years under Trump (2,025,350).
And while the monthly numbers of migrant encounters at the border is not the lowest in history, they are lower in Trump’s second term than at any time over the last 50 years, according to the Pew Research Center.
In an Oct. 16 press release, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported — as Trump claimed — that there have been no releases at the border in 17 consecutive months, meaning no one caught crossing the border illegally was temporarily released into the U.S., for example, to apply for asylum. On his first day in office, Trump enacted a policy effectively barring asylum applications.
In the past, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have sometimes twisted that statistic to claim that no one at all has come illegally into the country. Because it’s hard to know exactly how many people successfully sneak into the country illegally, we have used apprehension figures as a proxy to measure illegal border crossings. In August, CBP reported that 8,870 migrants were apprehended at the border. Those are the ones apprehended. As we wrote in September, CBP keeps, but does not often publicly release, figures on so-called gotaways, immigrants who are detected via electronic surveillance crossing the border but evade apprehension.
Rosario “Pete” Vasquez, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, reported on social media that there were 2,123 gotaways in May 2025 and 986 in June 2025. Data obtained by the Cato Institute via a Freedom of Information Act request indicated another 6,815 gotaways in the following three months. So the numbers are relatively low, but they are not zero.
The Trump administration has also increased interior enforcement and deportations. According to publicly available Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, the average daily population of those detained by ICE during the last three months ending in July is up 272% compared with the last three months under Biden.
Although Trump continues to say that “we’re still getting rid of the worst of the worst,” as he did at the Oct. 17 rally, ICE is arresting a greater percentage of people who have neither criminal convictions nor pending criminal charges. In the last three months of the Biden administration, 6% of those arrested had neither criminal convictions nor pending charges. By contrast, over the three months ending in July, the latest data available, that figure climbed to 34%.
Refugees
Refugees who flee their countries because of conflict, violence or persecution have found little or no refuge in the United States under Trump.
In fiscal year 2026, which ended Sept. 30, the U.S. admitted only 16,292 refugees, according to the State Department’s monthly refugee admissions reports. That’s the lowest number since fiscal year 2021, which started under Trump and ended after Biden won the November 2020 election.
Overall, the U.S. admitted only 16,798 refugees in Trump’s first full 20 months in office, beginning Feb. 1, 2025, and ending Sept. 30, 2026, according to the State Department data. That’s just 840 refugees per month under Trump.
By contrast, in its last full 20 months in office, from May 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2024, the Biden administration admitted 162,536 refugees — a monthly average of 8,127, State Department data show. That’s a decline of nearly 90% under Trump.
The steep dropoff stems from Trump’s Day One executive order that indefinitely suspended all refugee admissions. The Trump administration also changed its mission statement for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.
Under Biden and even in Trump’s first term, the bureau’s mission was to promote “U.S. interests by providing protection, easing suffering, and resolving the plight of persecuted and forcibly displaced people around the world.” The bureau’s mission now is to conduct “diplomacy aimed at ending mass and illegal migration.”
South Africa’s white minority Afrikaners are a notable exception to Trump’s stringent refugee policy.
Less than two weeks after suspending refugee admissions, Trump carved out an exemption for Afrikaners — who, he wrongly claimed, have been victims of “a genocide” in their homeland.
Nearly 99% of all refugees admitted in Trump’s first full 20 months in office were from South Africa, State Department data show.
For fiscal year 2027, which began Oct. 1, Trump capped refugee admissions at 17,500. The Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2027, which Trump issued on Sept. 25, states: “The admissions shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa.”
Health Insurance
The share of people without health insurance in 2025 was statistically unchanged from 2024, according to the latest government estimates.
As we wrote in our last “Trump’s Numbers” update, in 2025, 28 million people were uninsured, representing 8.3% of the U.S. population, according to early release estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, which measures insurance status at the time people are interviewed. That was up just 0.1 percentage points from 2024, which was not a statistically significant difference.
The NHIS is conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In September, the Census Bureau published its annual report on health insurance coverage, which measures people who were uninsured for the entire calendar year. It similarly found that the percentage of people without insurance in 2025 was “not statistically different from 2024.” The report estimated that 26.7 million people, or 7.9% of the U.S. population, lacked insurance in 2025, down from 8% in 2024.
The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act is expected to increase the number of people who are uninsured by 10 million over 10 years, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But CBO anticipated those effects wouldn’t begin until after 2025. CBO projected the law would lead to an additional 1.3 million people being uninsured in 2026 and an additional 5.2 million in 2027.
Enrollment in Affordable Care Act marketplace plans fell from 22.1 million in 2025 to 19.2 million in February 2026, according to federal data released in June, though it’s unclear how many of those people have gained other coverage. Experts attribute the drop largely to the expiration of more generous subsidies at the end of 2025.
Food Stamps
The number of people receiving benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, continues to fall.
According to preliminary data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 36.4 million people were participating in SNAP as of June. That’s down by more than 6 million, or 14.3%, from the 42.4 million who were enrolled in January 2025. (USDA notes the data may include people receiving disaster assistance.)
While SNAP enrollment has been trending downward since late 2024, the decrease has accelerated since Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025. The law’s changes to SNAP eligibility, which include extending work requirements to adults aged 55 to 64, are expected to lower enrollment and reduce federal spending on the program.
Income and Poverty
Household income — Median household income rose 2.6% from 2024 to 2025, according to the most recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The median household income was $87,460 in 2025, up $2,250 from the median income of $85,210 in 2024. (Those figures are in 2025 dollars, so they take inflation into account.) The Census Bureau says median household income in 2025 was the highest on record going back to 1967.
The median is the midpoint of the income distribution, meaning half of households earned more and half earned less.
Poverty — The share of people under the federal poverty line declined during Trump’s first year of his second term. The official poverty rate was 10.2% in 2025, down from 10.7% in 2024, according to estimates the Census Bureau released in September.
In raw numbers, 34.5 million people were living in poverty in 2025, compared with 36 million in 2024.
The official poverty rate for children, meanwhile, dropped to a “historic low” of 13.4% in 2025, the Census Bureau said. The child poverty rate was 14.4% in 2024.
The official poverty rate is based on pretax income and family size. A different measure of poverty, called the supplemental poverty measure, showed no real change in 2025.
The SPM factors in government assistance programs that help low-income households, such as food and housing assistance. It also accounts for a wider range of necessary expenses and geographic variation in the cost of living. By that measure, 13.1% of the U.S. population was living in poverty in 2025, which the Census Bureau said was “not statistically different from 2024.”
Corporate Profits
Corporate profits continue to climb to new heights under Trump.
After-tax corporate profits were $4.28 trillion at an annualized rate in the second quarter of this year – up $331.6 billion, or 8.4%, from the previous quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. (See line 45.)
The second quarter figure is nearly 25% higher than the full year in 2024, the year before Trump took office, and about 27% higher from a year ago.
A Wall Street Journal article in August on “booming” corporate profits chalked up “the good times” this year “to a confluence of fortunate events: red-hot artificial-intelligence spending, federal spending and the windfall companies are getting in the form of refunds of some of their past tariff payments.”
The Supreme Court in February ruled Trump’s tariffs that he imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act exceeded his constitutional authority. As of Oct. 2, $126 billion has been refunded to U.S. companies, according to a U.S. Court of International Trade filing this month. That’s “more than 75% of the $166 billion of unlawfully collected IEEPA duties,” the court filing said.
But after-tax corporate profits have been trending upward for years. Last year marked the 10th consecutive year that profits increased year over year, dating to 2016 under President Barack Obama.
The BEA estimate for this year’s third quarter profits is scheduled to be released Nov. 25.
Stock Market
Although polling shows Americans are unhappy with the direction of the overall economy, all three major U.S. stock indexes have made significant gains under Trump and set new records.
The S&P 500, which is made up of 500 large-cap companies, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite, which is composed of more than 2,500 companies, set new highs on Oct. 6.
The S&P closed on Oct. 20 at 7,712.57 — 28.6% higher than it was on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before Trump took office. The Nasdaq was up 34.6% during that time.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average – which tracks 30 of the nation’s largest companies – has seen smaller gains than the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. As of the Oct. 20 close, the Dow had increased 20.7% under Trump. The Dow last set a record on Aug. 5, when the market closed at 54,349.12.
Crime
The FBI released its annual report on nationwide crime for 2025 in August, showing historic one-year drops in the violent crime and murder rates. Those declines come after both rates have been trending down since 2023, after increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The FBI found that the violent crime rate declined by 9.7% and the murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate dropped by 18.5% from 2024 to 2025, the largest one-year declines since the FBI began releasing the nationwide crime estimates in 1936.
The data are estimates based on figures submitted by more than 17,000 local law enforcement agencies covering about 96% of the U.S. population. The violent crime rate went from 362.9 offenses per 100,000 population in 2024 to 327.6 per 100,000 population last year. The murder rate dropped from 5.1 per 100,000 to 4.1.
That 4.1 murder rate is at a historic low. The FBI said it’s tied with the bureau’s 1955 and 1956 figures, while a report by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonprofit think tank, determined it was the lowest since 1900 (that report used public health data for the years before 1960).
For the 2006 to 2025 FBI data, see Table 1 after downloading the FBI’s 2025 estimations for crime in the U.S.
“Overall, it was the largest percentage point drop in murder, violent crime and property crime ever recorded,” Jeff Asher, a co-founder of AH Datalytics, a consulting firm that compiles crime data, wrote on Substack of the one-year crime decline. He noted that this followed historic drops in the two years prior. “With murder you have to go all the way back to 2024 to find the previous largest one-year drop in murder and before that the previous largest one-year drop was in 2023.”
AH Datalytics, CCJ and the Major Cities Chiefs Association, an organization representing police executives in large cities, publish more current data than the FBI from a subset of law enforcement agencies, and those statistics all show that violent crime and murder have continued to drop in 2026. AH Datalytics found a 5.9% decline in the number of violent crimes and a 16.6% decrease in the number of murders when comparing January to August with the same period in 2025. That’s based on figures from law enforcement agencies that cover about a third of the U.S. population.
Trump has taken credit for the drop in crime in 2025, saying in August that this happened “because of what the federal government’s doing.” But criminology experts said there are many plausible factors, as we’ve written.
In September, CCJ convened 48 experts to explore why homicide has experienced a historic decrease from 2022 to 2026. “No single factor was viewed as the dominant explanation for the decline,” the group said in a summary of its report on the summit. “Easing pandemic-related social and economic disruption was the only factor rated as a major contributor by a majority of respondents, at 57%.”
Several other factors were viewed as “leading contributors” to the decline, “including expanded community violence intervention (CVI), … increased use of focused deterrence, increased local government capacity, an increase in public safety and support resources relative to demand, and an increase in proactive policing enforcement.”
There was little support among the experts for more than half of the possible factors, including actions taken by the Trump administration, such as deploying the National Guard to some U.S. cities and increasing enforcement of immigration laws.
Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of CCJ, told us in August that many factors were potentially affecting changes in crime. “You know the movie ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’?” he asked. “That’s what we’ve got here. And when you have so many, so many things happening at once, it can be extremely hard to disentangle.”
Oil Production and Imports
Crude oil production in the U.S. averaged more than 13.8 million barrels per day during Trump’s most recent 12 months in office through July, according to the most recent Energy Information Administration data. That was about 4.1% higher than the daily average of nearly 13.3 million barrels in 2024.
Average production over the last 12 months is also above the output of close to 13.7 million barrels per day in 2025, the current annual record, based on EIA data going back to the 1860s. Production of crude has increased each year since 2022, after declining during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
The EIA said more production in the Permian region in Texas, New Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico — as result of higher oil prices — has contributed to the increase in 2026.
However, crude oil imports from other countries, which averaged more than 6.2 million barrels per day over the last 12 months, are down about 5.5% from the daily average of nearly 6.6 million barrels daily in 2024.
Carbon Emissions
After declining in Biden’s last two years in office, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have increased.
In the most recent 12 months ending in June, there were nearly 4.9 billion metric tons of emissions from the use of coal, natural gas and petroleum-based products. Emissions in that period were up 1.5% from 2024, according to EIA data.
But in its Short-Term Energy Outlook for October, the EIA forecast that CO2 emissions at the end of 2026 will still be lower than the 4.9 billion metric tons emitted in 2025. “In 2026, decreases in CO2 emissions primarily reflect expected declines in coal consumption and, to a lesser extent, declines in consumption of various petroleum products,most notably motor gasoline and distillate fuel oil,” the EIA said.
Federal Debt and Deficits
Debt — Since our last update, the federal debt held by the public increased by more than $610 billion, according to Treasury Department data as of Oct. 19. The publicly held debt, which excludes money the government owes itself, is now more than $32.5 trillion. That’s up nearly 12.8% from when Trump began his second term.
Deficit — The debt continues to increase because of constant annual budget deficits. The latest Treasury data show the deficit increased to nearly $2 trillion in fiscal year 2026, as the government spent a record of almost $7.4 trillion but only received about $5.4 trillion in revenue.
The FY 2026 deficit was the largest since FY 2021 — which was exacerbated by emergency pandemic spending — and it was about $217 billion more than the FY 2025 deficit, which had decreased slightly from the deficit for FY 2024. (The last budget surplus was in FY 2001.)
Federal revenue in FY 2026 was lower than it would have been because the Trump administration had to issue $145 billion in tariff refunds, according to Treasury figures. Corporate income tax revenue was also down by more than $43 billion compared with the prior year.
Judiciary Appointments
Supreme Court — There still have been no vacancies on the high court during Trump’s second term. At this point of his presidency, Biden had won confirmation for one justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Court of Appeals — Ten of Trump’s nominees for U.S. circuit courts have been approved. At the same point in Biden’s term, 25 had been confirmed.
District Court — As for District Court judges, 46 of Trump’s nominees have been confirmed, while 58 judges had been confirmed at this point under Biden.
One judge for the Court of International Trade has been confirmed under Trump; none were confirmed at this point under Biden.
No judges have been confirmed under Trump for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, while two judges were confirmed at the same point in Biden’s presidency.
As of Oct. 20, there were no vacancies for Court of Appeals judges and 28 for District Court judges with 11 nominees pending.
Sources
We provide links to the sources for these statistics throughout the article.
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