Key Statistics From Obama's Final 2017 Economic Report

The president's economic advisers released their annual report - the 2017 Economic Report of the President - today, 15 December. You can find it here but you might not have time to read through all 599 pages of Barack Obama and Jason Furman's report, so here are some highlights.

Jobs, Unemployment, Wages

Economy has added 14.8 million jobs over 74 months, the longest streak on record.

• Since June 2009, when Chrysler and General Motors (GM) emerged from bankruptcy, the automobile industry (manufacturing and retail) has added nearly 700,000 jobs, the industry’s strongest growth on record.
• The unemployment rate has been cut by more than half to 4.6 percent as of November 2016, below its pre-recession average
  
  
  

  

  Wages for production workers grew faster since 2012 then they did from 1980 to 2007

• In 2015, median household income rose at the fastest rate on record, with the typical family earning an additional $2,800.
• Since the end of 2012 private production and nonsupervisory workers, who comprise about 80 percent of private-sector employment, have seen their real hourly earnings increase by 5.3 percent, more than the total cumulative real wage gains for these workers from 1980 to 2007
• Real wage growth has been faster in the current business cycle than in any since the early 1970s.
• Real median household income increased 5.2 percent in 2015, the fastest growth on record. 
• Households at all income percentiles reported by the Census Bureau saw real gains in income, with the largest gains among households at the bottom of the income distribution.
• The poverty rate fell by more than any year since 1968

Healthcare

     As of 2016, the uninsured rate stands at its lowest level ever.

•      The uninsured rate among children has fallen by almost half since Obama took office
•      20 million more adults have health insurance
•      So do 3 million more children

The growth in healthcare costs has dropped since ACA

Since the ACA was signed into law in 2010, health care prices have risen at the slowest pace in 50 years.

• The average costs for a family with employer-based coverage in 2016 were $4,400 below where they would have been had costs grown at their pace over the decade before the ACA became law

Wealth & Budgets

The 2016 deficit was 3.2 percent of GDP, about a third of the 9.8 percent of GDP deficit recorded in 2009 and equal to the average over the last 40 years

Per capita GDP growth higher in US than Japan or Euro Area

The economy is now 11.5% larger than at its pre-Recession peak

Real household net worth exceeds its pre-recession peak by 16 percent

Energy

     Since 2008, the United States has tripled the amount of energy harnessed from wind and has increased solar generation thirtyfold.

     Today, the United States is less reliant on foreign oil than it has been in nearly three decades.

Innovation

     The America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011 led to a 20% reduction in patent wait times, supporting a 30% increase in patents granted