Claims that President Trump inherited a thriving economy from President Biden are not just misleading—they’re dishonest. The Biden supporters measure economic “growth” from the lowest point of the COVID lockdowns in 2020, when businesses were shuttered and unemployment was artificially high. This makes even mediocre recovery look like booming progress. But if we compare Biden’s economy to 2019—the last full year before the pandemic—many key indicators show not a robust rebound but an economy weighed down by inflation, debt, and diminished purchasing power.
Real wages are down. From January 2021 to May 2024, average hourly earnings for private-sector workers fell by 2.24% when adjusted for inflation. Even broader comparisons with 2019 show only marginal gains. According to the House Budget Committee, inflation-adjusted household net worth was still down 4.7% as of early 2025. Meanwhile, inflation surged 15.5% cumulatively from January 2021 through December 2024, with a peak annual rate of 9.1% in June 2022—the highest in more than four decades. President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, along with the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act—two of the largest spending and money-creation programs in U.S. history—helped sustain inflationary pressure rather than curbing it.
Employment numbers tell a similarly deceptive story. Biden often boasts of adding 16.6 million jobs, but much of that reflects people simply returning to work after pandemic shutdowns. Job growth also leaned heavily on part-time and public-sector positions. Of the jobs Biden claims to have created, about half, 8.3 million were part-time, and 1.2 million were government jobs—positions effectively created by executive action, shifting money from taxpayers to government payrolls.
Americans were also borrowing more just to get by. Total household debt hit a record $17.9 trillion in the third quarter of 2024, up 26% from $14.15 trillion in 2019. Credit card debt alone exceeded $1.14 trillion, up nearly 15% when adjusted for inflation. Delinquencies have surged—9.1% of credit card accounts were delinquent as of Q3 2024, the highest rate since 2011. Auto repossessions rose by 23% in 2023, with an estimated 1.5–2 million vehicles repossessed, a jump from 1.3 million in 2019. Foreclosure activity followed a similar path: filings rose to 357,000 in 2023, still below the 493,000 in 2019 but climbing as post-pandemic protections ended.
The cost of living soared, especially in housing. Average mortgage payments doubled from $1,300 to $2,600 between 2021 and 2024, pushing many Americans out of homeownership, while rents rose 40%. At the same time, the personal savings rate fell to 4%—down from 7.5% in 2019—signaling that households were draining savings just to cover basic expenses.
Supporters of Biden’s economy often point to headline GDP numbers and international comparisons. In 2023, the U.S. posted a real GDP growth rate of 2.5%, outperforming peers like Japan (1.9%), Canada (1.1%), and the Euro area (0.5%). That resilience, however, is nothing new. In 2019, the U.S. grew at 2.3% while Germany grew just 1.1%. The U.S. economy has long outperformed other G7 nations thanks to a large consumer base, a dynamic private sector, and global tech leadership. Nominal GDP reached $27 trillion in 2023, dwarfing Japan’s $4.2 trillion and Germany’s $4.5 trillion. But these structural advantages are not new and cannot be credited to Biden. They are the result of decades of American economic dominance—not the product of any one administration’s policy.
Hellbound and Down 
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