Weather 
President Joe Biden will leave the White House with a strong economy, historic gains in the job market, a foundation for future manufacturing growth, and having brought down decades-high inflation without triggering a recession.
Those feats, economists say, are even more impressive considering the nation was deep in the throes of a deadly, economy-scarring pandemic when Biden took office.
His legacy will also include higher national debt, a wider trade deficit and steeper costs for housing, health care, higher education and child care.
“[The $36 trillion national debt] is a significant burden for future economic growth, a significant burden for the well-being of our children and grandchildren, because it’s a big, big sword hanging over them,” Andreas Hauskrecht, clinical professor of business economics and public policy at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. “And in that regard, my evaluation of the Biden administration is fiscally irresponsible. Am I saying [President-elect Donald Trump’s first] administration was better? No. Am I saying I think the new Trump 2.0 will be better? No. But when I look at Biden’s fiscal record, he failed the class.”
And then there’s the high cost of living.
While most economists agree that Biden was not to blame for inflation, the yearslong bout of sharp-rising prices hit Americans hard and, ultimately, cast a thick cloud over Biden’s presidency that carried through to the November election.
Economic cycles don’t begin or end with presidential administrations. Also, economic data can be highly influenced by events outside of a president’s control, such as war or extreme weather or a global pandemic and its aftereffects.
With that in mind, here’s a look at how key metrics fared during Biden’s presidency.
The labor market during the Biden administration was nothing short of historic.
Through December, the US economy added jobs for 48 consecutive months, tying the second-longest period of employment expansion on record, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data that goes back to 1939.
He’s the first US president to oversee monthly job gains for the entirety of his presidency. (Caveats: President Barack Obama did not have any monthly job losses during his second term; also, labor market data is subject to revision as more complete information becomes available).
As it stands now, the US economy added 16.6 million from February 2021 (the first full month of Biden’s presidency) through December 2024, BLS data shows.
There are some pandemic effects: The US lost nearly 22 million jobs in March and April of 2020. Following massive relief and recovery measures, the US added more than 12 million jobs from May to December 2020.
In June 2022, the US surpassed its pre-pandemic employment totals. Since then, the economy has added 7.6 million jobs, or nearly 240,000 jobs per month, BLS data shows. Since 1939, monthly job gains have averaged 125,000.
The recent years’ surge in immigration has been credited with cooling a hot labor market, contributing to higher productivity and easing a structural decline in native-born workers (via low birth rates and an aging population).
As job gains soared, the unemployment rate hit a nearly 54-year low of 3.4% in January 2023. To be fair, the nation’s jobless rate hit a half-century low of 3.5% during first Trump administration; but when Biden entered office, the unemployment rate was 6.8%.
However, the historic significance extends beyond the low rate. During Biden’s time in office, the jobless rate was under 4% for 27 months, a streak not seen since Lyndon B. Johnson was in office, back in the mid-1960s.
“When you get low unemployment, the people who benefit are disproportionately those at the bottom end of the labor market,” including marginalized groups such as Black workers, Hispanic workers, and people with disabilities, Dean Baker, economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told .
Wage and employment gaps between Black and White workers narrowed to record levels during Biden’s presidency, Baker noted. Also, the Black unemployment rate hit an all-time low of 4.8% in April 2023, BLS data shows.
GDP and consumer spending
Biden will hand off an economy that continues to grow at a healthy clip. Real Gross Domestic Product, the broadest measure of economic output, expanded at an annualized rate of 3.1% during the third quarter of last year, according to the most recent data available from the Commerce Department.
What’s kept the economy churning has been strong consumer spending, even in the face of high inflation and high interest rates meant to counter those price hikes. Consumers have continued to power the economy, helped by a sturdy labor market; a steady stream of stronger-than-typical wage gains; and, in some cases, financial buffers accumulated during the pandemic “refinancing boom.”
Household debt has grown, but so have incomes; however, the number of consumers defaulting on their credit cards and car loans has been on the rise during the past year, an indication that Americans are increasingly strained.
Wages have been growing faster than inflation for 19 months running; however, they remain just below pre-pandemic levels.
Real GDP growth and GDP per capita are both running at their fastest pace during a presidential administration transition since 2000, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
High inflation was Biden’s (and, ultimately, presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris’) Waterloo.
The bout of high inflation was a once-in-a-generation event that spun out of a once-in-a-century pandemic and was not unique to the US. As such, it’s not fair for Biden to shoulder the full blame, CEPR’s Baker said.
“We wouldn’t blame the governor of Florida because they lost all this housing in a hurricane, that’d just be silly,” he said. “And I’d say the same here.”
Still, in the cadre of causes (which include supply chain snarls, shifts in demand and spending patterns and Russia’s war in Ukraine) some prominent economists have said the massive fiscal packages passed under Trump and Biden stoked demand.
Regardless, prices for almost everything rose substantially, weighing heavily on Americans, especially those who live paycheck to paycheck.
Prices of commonly purchased goods and services are 20.5% higher than they were in February 2021, the first full month Biden was in office, according to BLS Consumer Price Index data through December. You’d have to go back to 1983 to have a bigger increase over a comparable period.
Grocery prices are 22.6% higher than they were in February 2021, the highest rate since 1982 for a similar period, data shows.
To counter fast-rising prices, the Federal Reserve embarked on one of the most aggressive monetary-tightening policies in recent history, bringing interest rates to a 23-year high at one point.
The painfully high interest rates filtered through the economy in a calculated effort to squelch demand, but further exacerbated the housing affordability problem in the US. Housing cost concerns pre-date Biden, but the issues deepened during the past four years, due to the pandemic, inflation and interest rates.
As of the third quarter of 2024, the median sales price of a single-family home was $420,400, Census data shows. That’s 18% higher than in the first quarter of 2021, a price spike driven by an unprecedented surge in activity during the pandemic and further fueled by low interest rates during the lockdown. The median sales price rose 5% during the comparable time frame in the first Trump administration.
The average rate on a standard 30-year fixed mortgage was 7.04% last week, according to Freddie Mac. Mortgage rates are expected to stay stuck above 6% during the next two years.
A shortage of available homes has been a longstanding issue for the housing market. Freddie Mac estimates the shortfall at 3.7 million units. Housing inventory did increase in 2024; plus, the Biden administration announced last week increased funding to build more housing as well as shore up protections for renters.
The cornerstone of Biden’s legacy is a series of sweeping legislative wins designed to pour funding into rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, expanding clean technology capacity and bolstering domestic manufacturing in critical areas like chip production. Taken together, the laws are designed to reshape key pillars of the US economy over the next decade.
Taken in isolation, each law is designed to deploy significant federal resources: The American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 economic relief package signed in March 2021; the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law; the CHIPS and Science Act, a $200 billion law to boost American chip manufacturing; and the Inflation Reduction Act, a $750 billion health care, tax and climate bill.
Together, that’s more than $4 trillion of investment, spending and tax credits.
Some of the economic and job gains have been immediate, and others will come to fruition during the coming years.
“Factory construction just went through the roof … we’re building at twice the rate that we were before the pandemic, which is incredible,” Baker said. “Some of those factories are now open, but others will be opening over the course of this year and next, and those will be jobs that I’m sure Donald Trump will be very happy to take credit for; but if you don’t have the factories, you don’t have the jobs. And it was the Biden administration that got the factories built.”
Across the Biden era, US stocks posted strong gains, fattening retirement accounts and providing hefty returns for investors. From Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021, to January 16, 2025, the S&P 500 had a total return (including dividends) of 63.77%, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
During the last two years of the Biden presidency, the S&P 500 posted its first back-to-back annual gains of over 20% since the late 1990s.
The Dow also surged. After losing 8.78% in 2022, the blue-chip index gained 13.7% in 2023 and 12.88% in 2024, closing above 45,000 for the first time ever in December 2024.
While the president’s agenda can certainly have an influence on the economy, the US stock market is a beast of its own and does not move based on who is in office.
Yet the stock market is often considered a barometer of the health of the economy, and its performance during a presidential term can influence perceptions of success or failure.
History shows that markets often perform well under Democrat presidents, and that proved again to be true during Biden’s presidency.
