the $3.11 may still seem high to people, but on an inflation-adjusted basis, it is at or below the average, really, since opec started doing its thing. food prices, which will also surprise people, were up 2.8% last year. even less than the overall inflation rate. as we move, steve, to your next chart, about this economy defying expectations, you talk to people who may even not be big fans of joe biden as we closed the year. the dow was up 37,000 from wall street s view, and for regular folks working, unemployment is down. what else are you looking at there? yeah, this was an economy and a stock market that surprised really all the experts. i don t think many predicted this. you ll see this the beginning of the year, economists were looking at a sliver of growth for the economy. some were predicting recession but not a lot of growth. what happened, and this includes the fourth quarter, which we ll get the actual number but we
some numbers even lower, but in that range. lowest of any president since somewhere before carter, i don t know where. even people like carter and reagan, who we ll talk about in more detail in a second, were sitting at 54%. obama at 43%. trump at 45%. a very strange situation for the president given the numbers i just showed you. obviously, there s a war going on in gaza. you know, jimmy carter faced a hostage crisis already under way at this point in his re-election. he still sat at 54%. let s look at the economic statistics. why might biden s arrival rating be so low? not because of the economic performance. at 3.1%, it s a little higher than some of these presidents but kind of in line. look at jimmy carter, 13.3% inflation and 54% approval rating. if you look at unemployment, the 3.7% for biden that i mentioned, again, this is lower, trump was at 3.6%, but this is lower
have good estimates, 3% growth. a very solid, very, very solid performance to the economy. then look at unemployment. people thought, economists thought it d edge up close to 5% as the federal reserve raised rates and forced the economy to slow down. in fact, it s just under 4%. it is still more or less where it has been for several years. if you look, tied to that is jobs growth, of course. consensus for the reasons i said, expecting a slower economy, thought we d actually lose a few jobs per month. in fact, we gained almost 250,000 jobs a month through november. we ll get one more number on friday of this week. lastly, the s&p, willie, as you mentioned, nobody can predict the s&p. let s be honest about that for starters. we were looking at 5%, the strategists. instead, they got 25%. wow. for joe biden s re-election, let s just look ahead to what people think about 2024.
been steadfast on, making sure we give that relief to american context of the election, just to the perspective of job performance from the president, how do you explain the groups that have supported joe biden for so long, democrats for so long, now kind of looking around, actually, not just with young voters, too, not that they re looking at donald trump but they re looking at other choices, how do you explain them straying from the this president and the democratic party? again, i m going to be super mindful of 2024 as we re into an election year. look, we understand what the american people went through these past three years. we came out of a pandemic, right, a pandemic we haven t seen in 100 years. when the president walked in, the economy was upside down. so we get it. we get that it is going to take a little bit of time for folks
supported democrats and this president so long, according to this poll, the president has 63% of support from black voters. he enjoyed 87% support in 2020. among latino voters, most troubling perhaps, he won the group by 33 points in the 2020 election. donald trump leads among latino voters by five points. how do you explain those numbers? yeah, willie, good to see you, as well. i ll be very careful because you mentioned donald trump, so i ll be really careful in not talking about the 2024 election because of the hatch act. what i will say is, and i think this is why it is important for us, like jared bernstein and for people like myself and others to talk to all of you, right, and lay out what we have done for those two critical communities. you re right, in 2020, the president was able to bring together the largest, most historic coalition that we ve ever seen, that democrats have ever seen. obviously, we want to continue that. what we have done for the black community and the lati