But it went the other way: Through the first three years of the Trump administration the county lost jobs, and brought in slightly less in wages in the first three months of 2020 than in the first three months of 2017 as Trump was taking over.
And that was before the pandemic and the associated recession.
With the U.S. election just a week away, recently released government data and new analysis show just how little progress Trump made in changing the trajectory of the Rust Belt region that propelled his improbable rise to the White House.
While job and wage growth continued nationally under Trump, extending trends that took root under President Obama, the country’s economic weight also continued shifting south and west, according to data from the U.S. Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages that was recently updated to include the first three months of 2020.
