There was never much doubt that President Trump would make boasts about the economy central to his re-election campaign; that is his style, after all. What is becoming more clear is that the data on the economy are giving him something genuinely worth boasting about.

That was especially evident in the first employment numbers of 2020, released Friday morning. It was about as good a jobs report as an incumbent president could hope for nine months before Election Day — and not just in obvious ways.

The big headline out of the latest numbers was that employers added 225,000 jobs in January, comfortably more than analysts had expected. That alone suggests that economic growth is steady at a minimum, and maybe accelerating as the year begins.

The seemingly bad news in the report — the unemployment rate ticking up to 3.6 percent from 3.5 percent — was actually driven by positive underlying trends. The share of adults either working or looking for work rose to 63.4 percent, its highest level since mid-2013. And the share of adults between ages 25 and 54 who were employed reached 80.6 percent, its highest level since mid-2001.