2019 State of the Union address: on Jobs

Bernie Sanders: FactCheck: Unemployment under Trump is lowest in decades

The video features Warren Gunnels, the senator's top aide on the Senate budget committee. Trump said in the SOTU speech, "unemployment has reached the lowest rate in over half a century." The official unemployment rate dropped as low as 3.7% in November--marking the first time it had been that low since 1969.

In the "fact-check" video, Gunnels says "the real unemployment rate--which includes those who have given up looking for work and those who are working part time when they need a full-time job--is 8.1%, not 4%." Gunnels is referring to the U-6, an "alternative measure of labor underutilization." Gunnels is right that the U-6 rate is 8.1%. But this is what he doesn't tell his viewers: Under Trump, the U-6 rate had dropped to its lowest level in 17 years, the lowest since April 2001.

Donald Trump: FactCheck: Unemployment under Trump is lowest in decades

The video features Warren Gunnels, the senator's top aide on the Senate budget committee. Trump said in the SOTU speech, "unemployment has reached the lowest rate in over half a century." The official unemployment rate dropped as low as 3.7% in November--marking the first time it had been that low since 1969.

In the "fact-check" video, Gunnels says "the real unemployment rate--which includes those who have given up looking for work and those who are working part time when they need a full-time job--is 8.1%, not 4%." Gunnels is referring to the U-6, an "alternative measure of labor underutilization." Gunnels is right that the U-6 rate is 8.1%. But this is what he doesn't tell his viewers: Under Trump, the U-6 rate had dropped to its lowest level in 17 years, the lowest since April 2001.

Bernie Sanders: Real wages for working class in 2019 are lower than in 1973

Over the last year, for example, real inflation accounted for wages for the average American worker is up by all of 1.2 percent--just $9.11 a week. In fact, real wages for that same worker are lower today than they were in 1973. Let me repeat. The average American worker, after adjusting for inflation, is earning less today than he or she did 46 years ago--despite huge increases in productivity. Sadly, millions of American workers today are forced to work 2 or 3 jobs just to pay the bills and to keep their heads above water economically.

And, let us never forget that, in America today, millions of our people are working for starvation wages--$8, $9, $10 an hour and here is the simple truth. Nobody can raise a family or pay the rent on these poverty wages.

Donald Trump: 600,000 new manufacturing jobs with rising blue-collar wages

Wages are rising at the fastest pace in decades, and growing for blue collar workers faster than anyone else. The economy is growing almost twice as fast today as when I took office, and we are considered far and away the hottest economy anywhere in the world.