What Was Said

“The GDP Rate (4.2 percent) is higher than the Unemployment Rate (3.9 percent) for the first time in over 100 years!” President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday.

The Facts

False.

Gross domestic product increased at a 4.2 annualized rate in the second quarter of 2018 and the unemployment rate was 3.9 percent in April, 3.8 percent in May and 4.0 percent in June.

But Trump is wrong that GDP growth has not been higher than the unemployment rate in the past century. In fact, it has happened in 185 months since 1948, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Most recently, in the first quarter of 2006, the gross domestic product grew at a rate of 5.4 percent, while the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent in January, 4.8 percent in February and 4.7 percent in March.

The biggest positive gap between the quarterly gross domestic product growth rate and unemployment occurred in September 1950. At that time, the U.S. jobless rate was 4.4 percent, and the gross domestic product increased at 16.5 percent in the third quarter — a difference of 12 points.

Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, acknowledged at a news conference Monday that Trump’s tweet was not accurate.

“What is true is that it’s the highest in 10 years,” Hassett said. “At some point, somebody probably conveyed it to him, adding a zero to that, and they shouldn’t have done that.”

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis