In the days before his State of the Union address, President Trump has claimed to have ushered in a historic comeback.
“So just one year ago under crooked Joe Biden — and he was crooked as hell — our country was dead,” he said at a rally last week in Georgia. “Now we have the hottest country. In one year, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
But economic indicators and crime metrics do not show abrupt reversals from “worst” to “best,” as the president often brags. Rather, trends on these issues that began before Mr. Trump retook office continued, largely unabated, in his first year back.
Here is what the data show.
Inflation
“I inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country. And now we have almost no inflation.” — in an interview with NBC in February
False. Inflation has slowed under Mr. Trump, but not by the drastic margins he is claiming. And prices are still increasing above the target of 2 percent set by the Federal Reserve.
As measured by the Consumer Price Index, inflation reached a four-decade high in the summer of 2022, at about 9.1 percent in June. That number was not a record, as Mr. Trump said; inflation reached higher points in the 1910s, 1970s and 1980s.
But inflation had fallen to 3 percent by January 2025, when Mr. Trump took office. This January, inflation continued to ease to 2.4 percent.
Jobs
“He was sleeping while you were trying to get a job. You weren’t working, and now we have the most people working in history.” — in a rally in Georgia on Thursday, referring to Mr. Biden
This is misleading. Mr. Trump’s claim ignores population growth and falsely described the employment situation under his predecessor. Other metrics show slower job growth and rising unemployment in Mr. Trump’s first year back in office.
It is true that more people are employed now — about 159 million people in January — than any other point in U.S. history. But the population of the United States is also the biggest in history, at more than 342 million people. (Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. could also have claimed to preside over the most people working during his term, as could most other presidents not in office during periods of economic downturns or recessions.)
But labor force participation — those who were employed or actively looking for a job — has held steady under Mr. Trump, changing little from 62.6 percent in January 2025 to 62.5 percent this January.
The unemployment rate rose slightly from 4 percent to 4.3 percent. The economy added 359,000 jobs from February 2025 to January 2026, compared with more than 1.2 million in the previous year.
Crime
“Crime was a mess. Right now, 125 years, it’s the lowest crime that we’ve had in a hundred — since 1900.” — in the NBC interview
This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump has a point that homicides are projected to reach a 125-year low in 2025, and broader categories of crime, too, are projected to decline. But that did not represent a stark reversal from 2024.
The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated that the national homicide rate was likely to fall to the lowest rate recorded in 2025, to 4.0 per 100,000 residents. (Official government estimates will be released later this year.) In comparison, the rate for 2024 was 5.0 per 100,000 residents, according to official F.B.I. data.
The murder rate has been declining since a surge in 2020. While 2025 had the largest single-year decline in the murder rate, it followed two consecutive years of record-breaking declines.
“This change started in 2023 really, maybe the very end of 2022, so it’s taking advantage of two previous enormous drops,” said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst based in New Orleans. “It’s obvious that this is just what was happening before and it continued.”
While the Council on Criminal Justice did not release estimates for violent or property crime rates for 2025, Mr. Asher believes that preliminary data also show declines in those broader categories. Still, he cautioned that historic comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt given limitations in older data.
Immigration
“By the way, we went from the worst border in history to the best, by far, the best border in history.” — in a White House reception on Wednesday
This is slightly exaggerated. Unauthorized crossings at the southwestern border plunged to the lowest levels in more than half a century (not quite “in history”) from record highs in 2022 and 2023. But the numbers had fallen sharply in 2024, and decreased even more under Mr. Trump.
Immigration officials recorded more than 237,000 encounters in the 2025 fiscal year, which began in October 2024 and ended in September 2025. That was the lowest since 1970, when officials recorded about 200,000 encounters. (In comparison, 2022 had the highest number of encounters on record, at more than 2.2 million.)
Monthly encounters peaked in December 2023 — at nearly 250,000 — and fell consistently in 2024, after Mr. Biden imposed severe restrictions on asylum at the border. By December 2024, the number had declined to about 47,000, about level with the numbers at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term.
Crossings declined even more in Mr. Trump’s first year back in office, to fewer than 6,500 in December 2025.
Lazaro Gamio contributed reporting.
Ashley Cai is a graphics reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class.
The post Trump Claims a Historic Turnaround for the U.S. Here Are the Facts. appeared first on New York Times.
