President Donald Trump makes use of a lot of fictional statistics. He often deploys them with a breezy confidence.
At an event in Wisconsin on Friday, although, he made a statistical claim that sounded so clearly doubtful that he puzzled aloud the place it had come from.
“And we’ve also had huge drops in — and I’ll tell you, this is something that’s amazing: African American unemployment is now doing better than it’s ever done. And I don’t know where that stat came from, but I’ll take it,” he stated. “I don’t know where the hell that stat come — but we’ll take it.”
The thriller “stat” isn’t true.
The most up-to-date unemployment fee for Black or African Americans was 6.6% in May, federal statistics present (all unemployment figures on this article are seasonally adjusted). That’s an enchancment from the earlier fee, 7.3% in April, and from its highest fee throughout Trump’s second time period, 8.2% final November — however it’s not near a report low.
It’s truly increased than the fee Trump inherited when he returned to workplace.
The Black or African American unemployment fee was 6.2% in January 2025, the month of his second inauguration, and 6.1% in December 2024, former President Joe Biden’s final full month in workplace. In truth, the 6.6% fee final month is increased than the fee in every of the final 34 full months of the Biden administration, from March 2022 by means of December 2024.
The record-low Black or African American unemployment fee — the report a minimum of since the starting of this federal dataset in the early Nineteen Seventies — is 4.8%, set under Biden in April 2023. The earlier report low, 5.3%, was set throughout Trump’s first time period in August 2019 and September 2019. During Trump’s second time period, nonetheless, the fee has not been decrease than 6%.
And since Trump spoke vaguely of “huge drops,” it’s price noting that even the 0.7-percentage-point decline in the Black or African American unemployment fee between April 2026 and May 2026, from 7.3% to six.6%, was not a report month-to-month drop. For instance, there was a 0.9-point decline from March 2024 to April 2024 below Biden, from 6.5% to five.6%. (It’s at all times wisest to take a look at multi-month traits slightly than one-month adjustments, which might be statistically unstable, however we’re masking our fact-check bases right here.)
It wasn’t clear whether or not Trump ad-libbed the falsehood or whether or not he was citing one thing from his ready textual content. The White House has not but responded to NCS’s requests for a proof of the claim, despatched on Friday night time and once more on Saturday morning.
Under presidents from each main events, the unemployment fee for Black or African Americans has been persistently increased than the charges for different racial teams. The overall national unemployment rate was 4.3% in May.
Trump used different inaccurate and long-debunked supposed statistics at the Wisconsin event on Friday. These have been amongst the ones he didn’t query out loud:
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His repeated claim that “$18 trillion” is being invested in the US. That’s an imaginary determine far increased than the “$10.6 trillion” determine the White House’s own website used as of Saturday for supposed “major investment announcements” throughout this time period – and even the White House determine is a major exaggeration.
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His repeated claim that “25 million” migrants have been allowed to enter the nation below Biden. This one can be not even near the fact; by means of the final full month of the Biden administration, the federal authorities had recorded below 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants throughout that administration, and that features hundreds of thousands who have been quickly expelled from the nation. Even including in the so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no method the whole was near Trump’s quantity.
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His repeated claim that “the Biden administration had the worst inflation in the history of our country.” (He added that different individuals “say 49 years, 48 years” slightly than in historical past, however stated he nonetheless thinks “it was forever.”) Peak Biden-era inflation, 9.1% in June 2022, was the highest in between 40 and 41 years, not 48 years, and nowhere near the all-time excessive of 23.7%, which was reached in 1920, or the highest level of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, 14.8%, which was reached in 1980. (And by January 2025, the month Trump was inaugurated, it had fallen to 3%.)