MEMO: First 100 Days Economy

TO: White House Communications Staff
FROM: Council of Economic Advisers Staff
SUBJECT: First 100 Days Economy Memo

Jobs Statistics:

• President Trump has created 345,000 jobs since taking office in January.
  • 188,000 (54%) of these were in non-government and government-adjacent sectors. This is a dramatic improvement from the last two years of the Biden Administration, when three-fourths of all new jobs were in government or government-adjacent sectors.
    • 2,000 of which were mining and logging jobs.
    • 27,000 of which were construction jobs.
    • 9,000 manufacturing jobs were created (compared to the 6,000 manufacturing jobs lost per month from Jan 2023 to Dec 2024).
  • At the same time that there were large private sector job gains, 15,000 federal government jobs were cut.
• The labor force participation rate for those without a high school diploma is up by 0.7% since President Trump took office.
• The veteran unemployment rate is down from 4.2% in January to 3.8% in March.
• 228,000 jobs were created in March alone, well above expectations.
  • This was the fourth best month in the last two years for private payroll growth.
• Remote work among federal employees has fallen over 16 percentage points from March last year to March this year, showcasing the success of President Trump’s initiative to bring federal workers back to the office.
  • Federal telework numbers are now in-line with the private sector.

Inflation Statistics:

• Prescription drug prices are down over 2% since President Trump took office. 
• Last month’s drop in the price of prescription drugs was the largest ever recorded.
• Gasoline prices, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), are down 7% since President Trump took office.
• Energy prices are down 2% since President Trump took office.
• Wholesale egg prices down are about 50% since President Trump took office. Most consumers have seen relief in prices on the shelf, but all consumers should see it within the next month or two.
• February inflation (the month prior to the most recent data) showed the smallest annual increase in core inflation in over four years (since March 2021).
• Both of the last two CPI inflation prints came in below expectations.
• Last month’s (March) decline was only the second monthly decline in inflation (CPI) in the last two-and-a-half years.
• These price declines are in contrast to the persistently high inflation under President Biden, which reached the highest annual rate in the past 40 years. After suffering for years under Biden Administration inflation, consumers are now getting welcome relief. On Biden’s watch, grocery prices rose 23%, and energy prices rose 34%.
• As a result of biting inflation, real wages in President Biden’s term were down about 2.4%.
• Moreover, in the most recent inflation print from March, airfare, used motor vehicles, and motor insurance all saw price decreases.
• Prices for wholesale goods fell nearly 1% last month and prices for wholesale services fell 0.2% last month, which will eventually lead to lower consumer prices.
• Last month, retail egg price inflation continued to slow.

Misc. Economic Statistics:

• Real average hourly earnings for middle- and low-income workers are up 0.4% and up 1% for workers in the manufacturing sector since President Trump took office.
• The automotive sector is growing: under President Trump, we already had the biggest one-month increase in auto sales in March in more than a year.
• Mortgage rates have declined roughly four-tenths of a percentage point since President Trump took office.
  • Assuming the most recent median home price in the U.S., a new homebuyer making a 20% down payment on a 30-year mortgage would save roughly $32,400 over the course of the loan, or about $1,080 per year.
• Industrial production was at the seventh-highest monthly level ever recorded in March. The only higher monthly levels occurred during the first Trump Administration in 2018 and in February of this year.
• Since the beginning of the Trump Administration, at least $5 trillion in new investment in the U.S. has been pledged from both foreign governments and private companies.

Economic Policy Wins:

• Upon taking office, President Trump immediately blocked all unfinalized Biden-era rules, saving Americans over $180 billion — $2,100 per family of four over the next decade — and launched a bold, multi-agency effort to roll back existing federal regulations that drive up the cost of living. This effort is projected to yield significant cost savings in the coming months, including the EPA’s rollback of tailpipe emission rules for light-duty and medium-duty vehicles ($667 billion in total savings) and the Department of Transportation’s latest Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards ($88 billion in savings). These two efforts alone yield $755 billion in total savings or over $8,800 per family of four over the next decade. The combined savings from all of these actions equal just over $935 billion or nearly $11,000 per family of four over the coming decade.
• The Trump Administration has implemented an aggressive 10-to-1 deregulatory initiative, which requires that whenever an agency proposes a new rule or guidance document, it must eliminate 10 existing rules or guidance documents. This effort builds on the successful deregulatory initiative introduced in President Trump’s first term, which required the repeal of at least two existing regulations for each new rule, and in practice eliminated 5.5 rules for each new significant rule.
• To date, President Trump has issued over 20 significant deregulatory presidential actions (i.e., executive orders, presidential memoranda, and presidential proclamations).