The monthly jobs growth data released Friday reported the creation of an estimated 916,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in March. This was significantly better than many economists had forecast. It is also revised up February’s estimate of jobs created from 379,000 to 468,000.

Taken together, the first 2 months of Joe Biden’s presidency have seen more jobs created than the first 2 months of any other president. The figure of 916,000 is the largest monthly increase since August 2020.

The US labor market has increased in size by 1.02% since President Joe Biden took office. This compares to the 0.22% it had increased by under Donald Trump at this stage in his presidency. The overall number of jobs does, however, remain 8.4 million below its pre-pandemic peak.

Biden is doing even better when compared to Barack Obama. The US labor market lost more than 1% of its jobs in the first 2 months of Obama’s administration, giving Biden a cumulative advantage of 2.17%.

Biden’s annualized percentage advantage over his Democratic Party predecessor is over 19%. Annualized data is notoriously volatile at this stage of a presidency and you can see more on the difference between cumulative and annualized data on our website.

We can also take a quick look at how Biden stacks up against George W. Bush. He again has a healthy lead on both cumulative and annualized performance.