President Donald Trump is taking office during an economic expansion that is already among the longest on record. | Getty White House Trump's first economic report card Trump will be confronted with the tough realities of a labor market he promised to fix.

President Donald Trump is about to get his first major economic report card.

The February jobs report, out on Friday morning, will be the first to measure employment gains that occurred entirely under Trump’s presidency, a key moment for a man whose pledge to “Make America Great Again” catapulted him to a surprise victory in November.


The number is expected to come in fairly strong, possibly well over 200,000, slightly above the average of the last year. The jobless rate, which Trump derided as fake during the campaign, is expected to decline a tenth of a percentage point to 4.7 percent.

The president is likely to cheer a strong number — as he did for the prior month's figures — even though he and other Republicans regularly ripped similarly robust job creation under President Barack Obama.

Trump has already been tweeting about jobs numbers this week, including a gain of 298,000 in a survey of private payrolls by ADP that came in well exceeding expectations. “Great news. We are only just beginning. Together, we are going to #MAGA !,” the president tweeted Wednesday.

But in 2016 after winning the New Hampshire primary, Trump told supporters not to believe “phony numbers” coming out of the U.S. Department of Labor. “The number is probably 28, 29, as high as 35,” he said of the unemployment rate. “In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent.”

These “phony” numbers are now Trump’s to own even though at this point his policies could not really be responsible for most of the jobs created in February. Analysts say renewed business confidence and soaring stock prices since the election could play a role if the jobs number comes in higher than expected. But mostly, it will reflect a continuation of a trend that began under Obama when unemployment peaked at 10 percent in October 2009.

“I would say it’s a bit early to attribute much of the strength [to Trump],” said Jim O’Sullivan of High Frequency Economics. “It’s not clear that the trend in employment growth has changed much since the election. I emphasize that it was already pretty strong. That being said, the surveys have picked up for sure and the equity market is up pretty sharply.”

Jobs reports are backward looking, showing evidence of what occurred in the economy in previous months. So while Trump may claim credit, it’s not clear he will deserve it.

“One of the most important elements of analyzing labor market reports is that they’re lagging indicators so they tend to be a reflection of what has been happening in the economy in the prior six months to a year,” said Frances Donald, senior economist at Manulife Asset Management. “The jobs numbers that we’ll see six months from now will probably be a better reflection of the new administration.”

Trump will also be confronted with the tough realities of a labor market he promised to fix.

On the campaign trail, Trump regularly cited the statistic that 94 million Americans were not in the labor force. While technically true, the number includes more than 50 million retired people and students who don’t want or need to be in the labor force.

Trump also cited a declining labor force participation rate that has been stuck near 40-year lows. The decline predates the last recession that ended in 2010 and reflects, at least in part, demographic trends including an aging workforce that will be hard for Trump to reverse.

Trump has also promised to boost wage gains and create a renaissance in low-end manufacturing jobs in the Rust Belt through tax cuts and a more aggressive trade policy that protects American workers. He will face challenges in that area as well.

After bottoming out in early 2010 at the depths of the recession, manufacturing has added about 1 million jobs over the past seven years. And government data show that there currently are more manufacturing openings than people able to fill them, something manufacturing CEOs mentioned to Trump in a recent White House meeting.

“The jobs are there, but the skills are not,” one CEO said according to reports of the meeting.

To deliver on his promises to boost domestic manufacturing jobs, Trump will likely have to focus on worker re-training and vocational schools, something that has not been a major part of his agenda. He also will have to deal with the rise of robotics replacing low-end manufacturing jobs.

Trump will also soon be running into a Federal Reserve that believes the economy is already at what it considers “full employment” and that sees wage gains, expected to rise again in the report on Friday, as hitting the point where they threaten to unleash dangerous inflation.

That means the central bank will likely increase interest rates next week and keep doing so throughout the year, which could contain further increases in worker paychecks and keep unemployment from dropping much more than what it is now.

Trump is taking office during an economic expansion that is already among the longest on record. Even with his planned tax cuts, regulatory relief and infrastructure spending, driving the jobless rate even lower will be a difficult task. The early jobs reports of the Trump era could end up being the best he sees for a while.

“His fiscal stimulus will be coming very late in the economic cycle,” said Steven Ricchiuto, chief U.S. economist at Mizuho.

Republicans beyond Trump will have to do rhetorical flips to praise jobs reports they often derided under Obama. “After another quarter of weak economic growth, today’s positive jobs report doesn’t mask the fact that, month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year, hardworking Americans have been waiting for the economy to improve under the Obama administration,” House Ways and Means Committee Chair Kevin Brady said last August after a jobs report showing a gain of 255,000, a number similar to the one expected on Friday.

But Brady is already sounding very different notes.

“I’m incredibly optimistic about the direction our economy is heading under President Trump,” Brady said in a statement ahead of Friday’s report. “His top priority is creating jobs here at home to improve the lives of all Americans.”