DURING Donald Trump’s inauguration speech he declared that America’s “forgotten men and women” will be “forgotten no longer”. Then, earlier this month, he vowed to bring back jobs to states that have been “hurt so badly” by globalisation. By “forgotten” people, he means above all white working-class men. They were vital contributors to his election: three-quarters of white men who left education at 18 and voted in November did so for Mr Trump, the highest share of any similarly sized demographic group. And despite the president′s tumultuous start in office, they have remained loyal to him. According to YouGov, a pollster, Mr Trump′s approval rating is 20 percentage points higher among working-class white men than it is overall.

“Forgotten men” are just as important economically as they are politically. Fully 22% of all male workers are non-Hispanic whites aged 25 to 65 with no more than a high-school diploma. However, before Mr Trump can keep a tally of the new jobs he hopes to help create for them, he will first need a benchmark for comparison. And during the president′s short political career, he has shown a tenuous grasp of statistics. In February 2016 he reckoned that the unemployment rate—rather than hovering around 5% as the official statistics showed—was “probably 28, 29, as high as 35” or even perhaps, “42%”.

In an effort to establish a reliable baseline, The Economist compiled a set of labour-market indicators in this week’s print edition that tracks the economic progress of Mr Trump′s most dedicated supporters. Our jobs index for white working-class men gathers together three statistics: the unemployment rate, the labour-force participation rate and hourly wages. For each component, it measures the gap between white working-class men and all other men. This group had good reason to hanker for change: in recent years its economic performance has lagged behind that of American men as a whole by ever-greater amounts. By updating the data each month, our forgotten-men index will monitor Mr Trump’s progress as he seeks to “make America the greatest jobs magnet on the face of the earth”.